THE Royal Court has given the States permission to add the names of people who had been left off the electoral roll.
The registrar-general went to the court yesterday with applications for five groups of people in various categories for six of the seven electoral districts.
These applications included the seven people who had originally missed out on the chance to vote despite registering online and getting their names in on time.
The court granted declaratory relief to make it happen.
Deputy registrar-general of electors Brian Richings said the applications would cover a maximum of 50 people, but the number affected was likely to be much lower.
‘We are going to make contact with as many of them as we can because we are not sure if they are still in the island or deceased.’
Judge Russell Finch said it was in the public good that those who had made applications in time and in good faith were given the right to vote.
Mr Richings said the States had taken legal advice since discovering the errors and had talked about it over the past week before deciding to go to the court with ‘exceptional’ applications as it had not been legally possible before, or so it was thought, to make further additions or amendments to the roll once it was closed on 31 January.
‘We are now reviewing both the processes that service the development of an electoral roll and the reform law which is going to be looked at during the coming months,’ he said.
‘Any recommendations will go to the States before the next general election.’
Mr Richings said his office was sorry that it had to go to court to fix things.
‘There were mitigating circumstances in that the law was deficient and it would not allow us to make amendments after 31 January.
‘We were using a roll that had been used for the 2004 election, which meant any errors in that were rolled over to this election.’
Article posted on 18th April, 2008 - 2.29pm
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