Derek Achong

The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) has scrapped its con­tro­ver­sial pi­lot project for par­al­lel da­ta col­lec­tion at 13 polling sta­tions on the eve of Mon­day's To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions.

The change of plan was an­nounced by the EBC in a press-re­lease is­sued around mid­day Sun­dayy and came hours af­ter a meet­ing with po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the elec­tion and the me­dia, on Sat­ur­day.

“The com­mis­sion lis­tened to all rel­e­vant par­ties and de­cid­ed to de­fer for fu­ture elec­tions af­ter there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion,” the re­lease said.

The EBC ex­plained that at the meet­ing, the po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the me­dia were al­lowed to wit­ness the demon­stra­tion of the project, which showed the si­mul­ta­ne­ous col­lec­tion of da­ta util­is­ing a tech­nol­o­gy process with­in a mock polling sta­tion.

“This high­light­ed how tech­nol­o­gy would work in tan­dem with the ex­ist­ing man­u­al process and that there would be no change in that man­u­al process,” it said.

The EBC ad­mit­ted that its de­ci­sion was in­flu­enced by the fact that the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend the demon­stra­tion and main­tained their ob­jec­tion to this ini­tia­tive.

“In light of the ob­jec­tion and as the EBC re­mains a com­mit­ted part­ner to our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process, the Com­mis­sion de­cid­ed to de­fer the in­tro­duc­tion of this ini­tia­tive,” it said.

The EBC not­ed that the project was not go­ing to be rolled out in all 15 dis­tricts be­ing con­test­ed in the elec­tion but on­ly in Scar­bor­ough/Mt Grace and Mt George/Good­wood.

It said that it would have pro­vid­ed more time­ly da­ta col­lec­tion to stake­hold­ers and had the po­ten­tial to in­form plans for im­proved ser­vice to the elec­torate as it has al­ready been used in oth­er Caribbean coun­tries.

The EBC said it would con­tin­ue con­sul­ta­tions so the project could be pos­si­bly in­tro­duced for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, next year.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to the EBC’s Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis-Scope by the PDP’s lawyers Kevin Ramkissoon and Leon Kalicha­ran on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

In the let­ter, Kalicha­ran sug­gest­ed that the move was out­side the EBC’s re­mit un­der the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act.

“We are of the con­sid­ered view that any at­tempt by the EBC to im­ple­ment would be care­less and high-hand­ed or at worst, un­law­ful,” Kalicha­ran said.

“We are of the view that hav­ing re­gard to all the facts and cir­cum­stances the fair mind­ed and in­formed ob­serv­er would con­clude that there was a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty that the EBC has car­ried out its func­tions in re­la­tion to this mat­ter with bias,” he added, as he threat­ened to file a law­suit on be­half of his client if the de­ci­sion was not re­versed by 12.30 pm, yes­ter­day.

Al­though the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is not con­test­ing the elec­tion, it sought to weigh in on the is­sue and ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

“It is ab­solute­ly un­ac­cept­able for the EBC to pro­ceed with such an im­por­tant mea­sure, on the eve of an elec­tion no less, with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the of­fi­cial Op­po­si­tion,” the UNC said.

The par­ty list­ed nine ma­jor con­cerns with the project in­clud­ing what da­ta was to be col­lect­ed, who would col­lect it, the se­cu­ri­ty of the col­lect­ed da­ta, who would have ac­cess to it and how long it was go­ing to be stored.

The live demon­stra­tion of the sys­tem on Sat­ur­day, showed a vot­er en­ter­ing the polling sta­tion, sani­tis­ing and pre­sent­ing a polling card and valid form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to a polling clerk.

Un­der the pro­pos­al, the vot­er would have made their way to the deputy pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer’s sta­tion where fur­ther ver­i­fi­ca­tion would take place and elec­tron­ic de­vices would be lodged in a hold­ing bas­ket.

The vot­er would have then been in­vit­ed to make their way to the bal­lot box to cast their vote.

Af­ter com­plet­ing their vote, the vot­er would show their stained fin­ger to the deputy pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, who would up­date a count us­ing an elec­tron­ic de­vice us­ing spe­cialised soft­ware in full view of the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer of each con­test­ing par­ty.

The pi­lot project is not the first time the EBC has come un­der crit­i­cism in the run up to the elec­tion.

In Oc­to­ber, June McKen­zie, a con­cerned cit­i­zen from Ba­co­let, filed an ap­pli­ca­tion for ju­di­cial re­view against the EBC over its re­port on the cre­ation of three new elec­toral dis­tricts in To­ba­go.

The move to in­crease the elec­toral dis­tricts was the re­sult of a dead­lock in the THA elec­tions in Jan­u­ary, in which the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and PDP each se­cured six dis­tricts. 

The three new dis­tricts are Lam­beau/Low­lands, Dar­ryl Spring/Whim, and Mt St George/Good­wood. All but two of the orig­i­nal 12 dis­tricts were slight­ly mod­i­fied to make the change.

In her law­suit, McKen­zie claimed that the EBC breached its statu­to­ry du­ties un­der Sec­tion 4 of the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) Act by al­leged­ly util­is­ing con­sid­er­a­tions that were not ex­press­ly or im­plied­ly con­ferred by the leg­is­la­tion. 

She al­so ques­tioned the EBC’s con­sid­er­a­tion of com­mu­ni­ty bound­aries as they sug­gest­ed that nat­ur­al bound­aries such as ma­jor high­ways and rivers should have been con­sid­ered.

Through the law­suit, McKen­zie was seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the de­ci­sions con­tained in the re­port as well as an or­der quash­ing it.

Re­spond­ing to the law­suit,  the EBC claimed it strict­ly com­plied with the leg­is­la­tion and was per­mit­ted to con­sid­er com­mu­ni­ty frag­men­ta­tion in ad­di­tion to nat­ur­al bound­aries such as rivers and high­ways.

The EBC al­so not­ed that if the Prov­i­dence/Ma­son Hall/Mo­ri­ah area was se­lect­ed in­stead of Good­wood/Belle Gar­den West as sug­gest­ed by McKen­zie, it would mean that res­i­dents of Ma­son Hall liv­ing on op­po­site sides of the North­side Road would be­long to dif­fer­ent elec­toral dis­tricts.

Late last month, High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams re­fused McKen­zie leave to pur­sue the case as she ruled that she (McKen­zie) failed to raise ar­guable grounds which would have a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess.

She said that even if McKen­zie had an ar­guable case, she would have still been barred from pur­su­ing the law­suit as lit­i­ga­tion seek­ing to in­val­i­date an elec­tion is con­fined to elec­tion pe­ti­tions af­ter they are com­plet­ed.

Quin­lan-Williams al­so stat­ed that there was de­lay in the case as the law­suit should have been brought af­ter the EBC’s re­port was ap­proved by Par­lia­ment.

Quin­lan-Williams not­ed that while McKen­zie was claim­ing that the EBC im­prop­er­ly con­sid­ered com­mu­ni­ty frag­men­ta­tion for the 15th dis­trict af­ter us­ing a nu­mer­i­cal analy­sis of the ar­eas with the most elec­tors, she said that al­le­ga­tions were based on a few words plucked from the EBC’s method­ol­o­gy and not from a de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tion of the re­port.

McKen­zie has sig­nalled her in­ten­tion to ap­peal the de­ci­sion.