UPDATE - 653 turned out for Advance Polling
Meanwhile, Governor Boyd McCleary told Virgin Islands News Online following his visit yesterday at the polling centre at the House of Assembly building that he was just visiting a small selection of polling stations to get a sense of how things are going.
“It seems to be going very smoothly and very well. There are a number of elderly and infirmed who are here because they can’t vote on polling day itself and they seem to be comfortable. They have been well looked after, they’ve got seats and they are waiting and it seems to be very orderly...they seem to know how the process is functioning so everybody seems contented so far, which is great.”
A number of candidates were also seen at the various polling stations and among those spotted at the centre in the 4th District were At Large candidates Eileen Barronville, Zoe Walcott-McMillan, 4th District candidate on the National Democratic Party (NDP) slate Mark Vanterpool, Independent candidate Collin Scatliffe and incumbent representative Dr. Vincent Scatliffe.
Vanterpool, who spent much of the morning mingling with the senior voters, said he believed the election process was going mostly well though he felt the lines could have been more orderly lines to make sure that most persons were able to vote in the order that they arrived at the polling station.
“It requires a little patience. It’s coming up to lunch time now and most of the folks have been sitting here a little while now and some of them are diabetic and so o. So they would need some sort of assistance with lunch but I am sure their family members who are with them would assist them with that. But I believe it is going reasonably well so far, a bit slow, but hopefully it will improve as we go on.”
The former representative also said he had some concerns about Monday’s polls since he was not certain sure if four booths would be sufficient to handle the traffic of voters in Road Town.
“But we have from six in the morning to six in the afternoon so hopefully the lines will move a little more briskly since there would not have so many persons needing assistance. We look forward to a good turnout on Monday,” Vanterpool added.
Another 4th District candidate Collin Scatliffe also said he was concerned that there did not seem to be anyone organising the voters outside of the polling station as a number of persons, who were unable to join the line, where waiting a long time.
Meanwhile, Virgin Islands News Online also spoke to one of the international observers here for the elections, Thomas Docherty, a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom.According to Docherty, he and team were invited by the Governor to observe the elections. He noted that observers from Commonwealth Nations often go around to see how other commonwealth nations carry on their elections.
“We went to the supervisor’s office this morning and were briefed on what the rules and regulations are and we have now broken into little groups and have been around different voting stations today. I think eight out of the nine districts we will visit today and when our colleagues from Caricom arrive on Monday we will go around all the polling stations again and look at the count and just observe how you do it. It’s interesting to see you already seem to have a lot of people coming out to vote.”
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