(Jamaica Gleaner) The Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) has embarked on an exercise to remove from the voters’ list the names of persons who have died since 1998.
Director of Elections Glasspole Brown says the exercise aims to delete the names of in excess of 260,000 deceased electors.
Brown was speaking at a Jamaica Information Service Think Tank at the agency’s head office in St Andrew on November 28, where representatives of the Electoral Commission made the announcement.
He said that the exercise comes against the background of concerns raised regarding the number of deceased electors’ names that are removed from the list each year.
He disclosed that the EOJ has deleted an average of under 5,000 names annually since continuous registration commenced in 1997.
“Hence, we anticipated that the list would have accumulated a [significant] number of deceased electors over the 20-year period. [So] there is now a need to refresh the list,” the director of elections added.
The exercise is twofold, with the first phase, which runs until April 30, 2019, entailing identifying the names to be removed.
The second phase involves removing those electors’ names from the list after they have been confirmed as deceased by the EOJ.
The EOJ is dispatching approximately 795 verifiers to the 63 constituencies islandwide to carry out the three-month exercise, now under way.
Brown indicated that for easy identification, each verifier will have an EOJ identification card and will be wearing a branded T-shirt bearing the agency’s crest on the front and the words ‘EOJ Verifier’ on the back.
* Political representatives supplying the EOJ with information on persons in their constituencies who have passed away.
* Public- and private-sector stakeholders sharing their records on persons who have died.
* The general public providing information on their families, friends, or acquaintances who are deceased.
To verify the death of electors, the EOJ is requesting the submission of any one of several identification documents for the deceased.
These include a passport, driver’s licence, or voter identification card, along with supporting documents such as death certificates, burial orders, and funeral programmes.
