Police, soldiers and election day workers voted yesterday without any major incidents in what Director of Elections Danville Walker described as “a very good day”.

“I think it was the best police/military vote we have had for some time,” Walker told the Observer following the closure of the polls at 4:00 pm. “I was very pleased.”

However, he said the only blemish was that a number of persons who showed up to vote were not on the particular voters list and were in effect not slated to work as election day workers in the September 3 general elections.

The Electoral Office said it had registered 6,813 police, 1,676 military workers and 24,922 election day workers.

At 10:30 last night, the Electoral Office said that of the 16,296 election day workers registered in the 40 constituencies it had counted up to then, 12,301 had cast ballots, representing a turnout of 75.5 per cent.

Earlier, Walker said he expected that yesterday’s exercise would set the pace for the general elections next week.

“Next Monday I expect all polling stations to open on time,” said Walker. “I also expect that there should be no confusion about what is expected of my staff and I expect that most people will know exactly where they are supposed to go and vote. If you have those three things in place you will have a good election.”

Meanwhile, he said he was not concerned about the possibility that all areas in the island might not have electricity restored for the taking of the polls due to disruptions caused by Hurricane Dean on August 19.

“We are used to areas not having electricity. Because although we might have electricity in Jamaica there are many polling stations that have no light in the building; you would be surprised to know how many schools don’t have light,” Walker pointed out.

“In some of the inner-city neighbourhoods the wires are taken out of the walls all of the time,” he said. “We learnt that when we were doing the Electronic Voter Identification and Ballot Issuing System (EVIBIS). We had to wire a lot of the schools so we could use the computers in them because the wires were gone out of the walls.”

Walker said this time around some schools that had been wired before will have to be rewired because of theft.

“All of those were wired, but some of them we have had to wire them back again,” he said. “We have over 60 electricians roaming around to make sure that they are wired.”

He further assured that the EVIBIS will be used in constituencies in St James, St Catherine and Kingston and St Andrew which, for the most part, have already received power.