Magnitude of alleged fraud is immaterial to elections results – Ramkarran

Jul 20, 2020  Source

Former Speaker of the House and Presidential Candidate of A New and United Guyana (ANUG), Ralph Ramkarran, has opined that the fraud which some allege was committed during the March elections would not be substantial enough to materially affect the elections results, if it were true.

GECOM Commissioner,Vincent Alexander

Ramkarran made this statement in the most recent edition of his column, Conversation Tree, in response to a letter to the editor from Government Commissioner on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Vincent Alexander. The Commissioner had said in his letter that 61 death certificates were availed to GECOM during the recount as evidence of dead persons for whom votes were cast.
Alexander said that he had listened to the press conference of the United States Ambassador to Guyana, Sarah-Ann Lynch who, when asked about alleged fraud impacting the credibility of the recount results, relied on the pronouncements of the CARICOM Scrutineer Team. The Team had stated that no evidence was provided by the APNU+AFC coalition to support its allegations of electoral fraud by voter impersonation.
Commissioner Alexander contended however that the death certificates he referred to, or any other materials tendered in support of the allegations of electoral fraud, were not shown to the CARICOM team.
In response, Ramkarran asked “If the Caricom election observers were not informed of the 61 death certificates, whose fault was that? And if they were, what would have been the consequence?”
Ramkarran explained that the acknowledged principle in determining the veracity of election results generally, as well as judicially, is to determine whether the act(s) of fraud – in this case, the alleged fraud – are likely to have affected the results.
“If the answer is no, then the alleged fraud is not considered to be material.” Ramkarran said.
In this case, Alexander’s letter referred to 61 death certificates, though his colleague on the Opposition side, Commissioner Sase Gunraj has responded to state that no evidence was tendered to support the allegations made during the recount, “except a few death certificates presented in isolation and without nexus.”
While Alexander’s allegation is that 61 fraudulent votes were cast in this regard, the margin of victory the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) has gained over the APNU+AFC coalition, evidenced by the national recount, is 15,416 votes.
When Kaieteur News reached out to Alexander yesterday, the Commissioner pointed to a document he tendered at the Commission, titled ‘The Case for a Non-Declaration’ and said that that points to tainted ballots affecting somewhere in the vicinity of 14,000 votes.
That document, seen by this newspaper, alludes not only to allegations of ‘dead’ voters but allegations of ‘migrant’ voters as well as irregularities uncovered during the recount, such as missing oaths of identities and certificates of employment. A summation of those cases of irregularities and allegations of fraud, sourced by Alexander to Chief Elections Officer, Keith Lowenfield, were thousands short of 14,000.
Lowenfield had used a novel approach to determine how many votes were impacted by the alleged fraud and irregularities. Instead of counting each case of irregularity or alleged fraud as one tainted vote, Lowenfield had decided that, if one vote is tainted, then all ballots included in its box are tainted as well. This method had led Lowenfield to first attempt to invalidate more 269,619 votes – more than half of all valid votes cast in the election.
Kaieteur News pointed Alexander to Article 163 of the Constitution, which gives the High Court exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of an election. He responded that the language of the Article implies that it gives the High Court exclusive jurisdiction only after a declaration is made, and not before. That argument has been defeated by the ruling of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), which stated in a release “Unless and until an election court decides otherwise, the votes already counted by the recount process as valid votes are incapable of being declared invalid by any person or authority other than the High Court through an election petition.”