New people continued to register.
In January 119, February 113 & March 93 persons did so for a total of 325 new registrants.
Two-thirds of all registrants were on St Kitts and the remainder was for Nevis.
On St Kitts, 25.5% of the new people registered in Constituency # 1, while in Nevis, 50% of registrations were in Constituency #11.
Overall, the largest number of registrants, 55, was seen in Constituency #1 followed closely by Constituency 11 with 54. For the last quarter of 2020, these two constituencies were also the busiest.
The lowest registrations took place in Constituency Nos 4 & 10, with 10 persons each. However, for No. 10, this represented a surge, as registration in Gingerland is usually quite low.
New Registrants are subject to a 2-month wait while their names are published for scrutiny before they can be activated to vote. When activated, their names are published as the revised monthly list.
For the quarter, 308 persons were so activated and published, 71 in No 1 alone.
This represents 23% of all activations, with the second closest being the 46 (15%) in Constituency # 9. By island, 100 activations (32.5%) were in Nevis.
The lowest activation areas were Nos 4 & 5 with 8 & 9 persons each. There were 14 in No 10, again representing a surge in activities.
The Annual Register of Voters (ARV) was published as required by law.
It showed a total register of 48,666 voters; 36,309 (74.6%) of which were in St Kitts and the remaining 12,357 (25.4) were in Nevis.
Readers will know that there is a constitutional requirement for constituencies to be as near equal as possible and that a Boundaries Commission is even now addressing the issue.
Their challenge will be to even out the high of 14.5% that occurs in No 8 with the low of 3.7% that exists in No 10.
If taken by island, their challenge looks slightly different: even out the 8.7% of No 5 and the 19.4% of No 8; while in Nevis it would be to level out the 14.4% of No 10 with the 52.4% of No 9.
For those who are interested in how the federal list translates for the local elections list of Nevis, the distribution is 2,204 in St. Pauls, 4,275 in St Johns, 1,873 in Gingerland, 2,470 in St James & 1,625 in St.Thomas.
The distribution varies from 13.2% to 34.6% The ARV gave rise to 495 objections, comprised of 260 for deaths and 235 for incorrect addresses.
Objections to registrants were received in 7 of the constituencies, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 11. In four of the constituencies, 2, 4, 6 & 10, there were no objections whatsoever. For Constituency 3, all objections were based on the death of the registrants.
Meanwhile, there were 76 claims for adjustment of registration information during the period, 31 from St Kitts and 45 from Nevis.
Of the total, 54 were received during February and March, largely as a result of the publication of the Annual Register of Voters.