Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
Several votes registered as invalid in Friday’s election were declared valid on closer examination Wednesday. It directly impacted the final outcome, as Johan “Janchi†Leonard ended up with two more votes and tied Maria Buncamper with 204 votes, but because he was higher on the UP list (#7), he now will go to Parliament instead of her, as she was #21.
Candidates of all parties except OSPP had requested recounts during the Main Voting Bureau’s public meeting, to verify the results, but it was decided to review only the invalid votes. That took a good while, also due to two of the 20 voting districts not having filed correctly, so that the suitcases with the actual ballots had to be reopened and checked.
This latest development is obviously frustrating for Buncamper and her supporters, while the UP reportedly is eyeing a court case to demand a full recount. As known, the “Lynch law†named after late NA politician Edgar Lynch made it so that representatives are elected into office based on personal votes rather than their positions on the candidate list unless, of course, there is a tie such as in this case.
Coupled with the unusually late announcement of the preliminary result at 4:00am Saturday, the unavailability of the individual count for nine districts at that time and the unusually high number of invalid votes, what happened yesterday is enough reason to seriously consider electronic voting in the near future. Certainly in this day and age, the use of computers in an election seems like a no-brainer.
Curaçao had tried it, but afterward parties unhappy with their showing started questioning the reliability of the outcome. When subsequently someone hacked a totally different electronic voting system in the Netherlands, the majority in the then-Island Council decided to go back to paper and red pencil, so the costly voting machines were stored and never used again.
Also keeping in mind the confusion surrounding the US presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore a few years ago – with the famous “hanging chads†of punch-card ballots – it is high time for St. Maarten to switch to electronic voting. Surely by now sufficient safeguards can be put in place to ensure there is no cheating.
In fact, a voter in Curaçao at the time received a printout as proof before leaving the booth. Of course, this can be misused as an invoice for vote-buying, but in the end the electorate needs to be mature enough to shy away from such unsavoury practices that should not be allowed to get in the way of progress.
