Dear Editor,

The Official List of Electors (OLE) according to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is 570,786, with many politicians and citizens expressing concern about the seemingly incomprehensible increase in the voters list for the 2015 General Elections.

The information below seeks to provide a reasonable explanation as to how approximately 5% of the OLE represent the names of dead persons.

The Population Department of the United Nations prepared estimates of Vital Statistics of Guyana, the information is carried by Wikipedia in the article Demographics of Guyana and from an extract of the vital statistics section we have the following data:

Assuming 6,000 deaths per year from 2011-2014; we can determine with some accuracy the number of names of dead persons who remain on the list when we conflate the above data with GECOM’s report published by the national media on April 16, 2015 – see extract from GECOM’s report below:

The foundation of the current Official List of Electors (OLE) is the House to House Registration that was carried out in 2008 by GECOM. We can derive the names of dead persons on the OLE, sourcing data from the two tables above.

Using the seven year period 2008 to 2014 – the names of dead persons on the OLE is computed as follows: 6,000 deaths per year multiplied by 7 – less 10% representing deaths of persons under the voting age of eighteen ( sourced from Bureau of Statistics a Guyana Government agency athttp://www.statisticsguyana.gov.gy/mortality.html section captioned Distribution of population and deaths by age and sex, Guyana:2004, then less 12,404, being the names of dead persons removed from official list of electors by GECOM.

Resulting from the foregoing we now have a rational basis to estimate that 25,396 names of dead persons are on the Official List of Electors, with the caveat that no adjustments were made for unregistered persons over the eligible voting age of eighteen in the 42,000 estimated deaths during the seven year period: 2008 to 2014.

An interesting segue is that we have the Chairman of GECOM, Dr. Steve Surujbally, informing the general public that of “Registrants coming of age: There were 37,355 registered persons (14 years and older) who would not have been 18 years of age at the time of publication of the 2011 OLE, but now qualify as electors.”

Presumably based on GECOM’s official listing methods the 37,355 newly age qualified electors for the May 11, 2015 General Elections; include both the living and the dead.

Yours faithfully,
Nigel Hinds