DIRECTOR of Elections Danville Walker says the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ), like it has done in the past, will be pulling out all the stops to minimise malpractices in the August 27 General Elections.

Addressing the 49th Annual General Meeting of the Jamaica Employers Federation in Kingston yesterday, Walker said the EOJ has, since 1997, managed to successfully address all of the major malpractices that the electoral system has been faced with, including multiple voting and the stealing of ballot boxes.

“We have pictures on our voters list so when you come into the polling station there is no doubt as to who you are,” said Walker. “We also haven’t lost any ballot boxes, we haven’t had any violence in our polling stations since the 1997 elections till now. Our elections are much safer and getting safer with every election that we have run. I don’t say we don’t have difficulties, but it is just a fact that our elections are safer.”

He said that as part of the EOJ’s plan to ensure that voters are not intimidated, all election day workers in Kingston and St Andrew constituencies have been selected from outside the Corporate Area.

“. None of the workers are going to come from the constituency. so the workers can feel free to carry out the polls; it is not likely that they will be intimidated,” Walker said.

According to Walker, it was expected that this would show “a significant difference in some of those polling stations where in the past there were no indoor agents from the opposite side and the persons who ran the polling stations tended to live in the polling division”.

In the meantime, the director of elections welcomed the passing of legislation imposing penalties for open-voting.

“One of the things I have found with the Jamaican electoral psyche is that although the ballot is secret, when you talk to persons, especially in the garrisons, they don’t believe the ballot is secret. The legislation just passed in the House is significant, you cannot now hold up your ballot and say this is how you voted,” Walker said.

According to Walker, the open vote “reality must not obtain”.

“It has to get to a point where every Jamaican feels that when they go to vote it is a private matter. I am really happy that we have that piece of legislation going into this election so that people must keep their ballots secret,” he added.