Approximately 150,000 Deceased Persons Removed From Voters’ List

The Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) is reporting that close to 150,000 deceased persons have been removed from the voters’ list through its Dead Elector Removal Exercise.

Director of Elections, Glasspole Brown, who made the disclosure to JIS News, said that significant gains have been made under the process to clean up the voter’s list, which is ongoing.

“We did remove a number of dead electors from the list. We have also looked at giving persons a greater opportunity to transfer their registration from where they are registered to where they currently live. That’s a part of the law so, therefore, there are a number of things we are doing to try and get the list as best as possible to what it ought to be,” Mr. Brown said.

Deputy Director of Elections with responsibility for Field Operations, Earl Simpson, said the EOJ works with several private and public institutions to gather information on deceased electors.

He noted that the EOJ has built relationships with key stakeholders such as the Ministry of Health and Wellness, hospitals, television and radio stations, to share records and provide information on persons who have died.

He said that funeral homes also play a major role in conforming the identity of electors who have died, so that they can be removed from the voters’ list.

“So, the number of persons that we removed… that is going up, and we intend to keep it at a certain level in order to address some of the backlog that is still on the voters list,” Mr. Simpson noted.

Under the Dead Elector Removal Exercise, the EOJ verifiers are deployed into constituencies to visit the homes of 1.1 million electors islandwide to identify electors who have died in the 40 and over age range. The process began in November 2018.