The group, which was granted national observer status, to monitor the by and council elections on Barbuda said that electronic voting would have eliminated the long, tedious waiting time for the results to be announced.
Speaking at a press conference to reveal the preliminary findings of a report on both elections, Secretary of the Free and Fair Election League, George Rick James said this would have been crucial on the sister island, since residents had to wait until 2 am Tuesday to hear the official results of the council election and again at 5:48 am for the by-election results.
“There were people who were lamenting the fact that the process was not being done elertronically, the Electoral Commission should have used the opportunity to introduce the system, what takes hours normally would have been done in a lesser timeframe,” James said.
Meantime, the two-member team, which was headed by Bishop Rolston Jeffery deemed the elections clean and fair despite a few well-documented glitches.
Bishop Jeffery gave his take on both exercises.
“The council election was free and credible as for the by-election, a crucial fact has been ignored that the returning officer never officially declared the victor, so as a consequence we think that the jury is still out on this one,”
More in today’s Daily Observer.
