Persons Can Still Renew Voter ID Cards

Electors who have not yet made an application through the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) to renew their existing voter identification (ID) cards are being reminded that they can still do so.

“The process will continue. It is up to the elector when they will come in to us. Whenever you decide to come in to our offices, we will be prepared to renew you card,” Director of Elections, Glasspole Brown, told JIS News.

“On our database, we have 1.9 million persons and those persons are in possession of the old ID cards and, therefore, there is a large number of persons who are still out there that ought to come in to us for renewal,” he noted.

Mr. Brown said the EOJ is anticipating that electors who had not yet renewed their cards will do so in the coming months as the current cards are set to expire on December 31, 2021.

Renewals can be done at any EOJ constituency office and persons can indicate where they would like to collect their new voter ID cards when they are ready.

“What we have is close to 800,000 cards that are ready for immediate distribution as part of the first tranche of distribution. We anticipate that as we go along, we will have a turnaround time of about a month to six weeks for additional cards to be put out there for distribution,” Mr. Brown said.

The EOJ has acquired an ID card-printing machine and sufficient blank cards to continue the process of renewal and distribution until all voters are in possession of new and valid voter ID cards.

With the May 31 Voters’ List documenting 1,946,194 voters, the EOJ implemented a strategy to aid in the efficient printing and distribution of the new cards for these electors. This included the automatic renewal of cards issued 2016 to 2021.

“The photographs and the information that we have in the database would be much more current than those before. Also, the persons added to the last voters list, they are part of the automatically renewed batch and, therefore, a new card was prepared for them and those cards are ready for distribution,” Mr. Brown said.

He noted that the voters added to the March 2021 Voters’ List were given one of the current cards that will expire at the end of the year to avoid having two voter ID cards in the public space ahead of the official distribution exercise.

Individuals who had registered to be on the November 2021 voters list, however, will be given the new voter ID card.

The EOJ began the distribution of new voter ID cards on October 11 in alphabetical order by surnames.

Persons with surnames from A-E can collect their cards on Mondays; F-K on Tuesdays; L-P on Wednesdays; Q-T on Thursdays, and U-Z on Fridays. The EOJ constituency offices will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Mondays to Thursdays and from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Fridays to facilitate the process.

The new Voter ID cards are set to expire in 2031.