NASSAU| The Parliamentary Registration Department is frustrating early voters by making it harder for people to apply to cast ballots in the advance poll.
30,000 voters are eligible to mark their X on September 9.
People attempting to submit an application online have encountered numerous roadblocks from errors popping up on the screen to the website preventing voters from downloading the application form more than once.
This also creates a challenge for senior citizens who are now eligible to vote early but have no access to a computer or are not computer literate.
In previous elections, one person from a candidate’s team could submit applications for multiple poll workers to vote early.
However, this time, Minister of National Security Marvin Dames is forcing each individual eligible to vote in the advance poll to go in and submit their own application.
The application process takes about 30 minutes.
In addition to making the process more frustrating, this new policy means that tens of thousands of people will have to line up outside application sites during the peak of a third wave of COVID-19 when people should be avoiding large crowds.
Some candidates fear that Dames will instruct the parliamentary registration department to accommodate FNM candidates and their election agents while frustrating candidates from the opposition and third parties.
