CATEGORY:REGISTRATION OF VOTERS ----------------------------------- By Trevor Thwaites Inside Grenada correspondent Saturday January 27,2007 GRENADA - Continuous Voter Registration for the Electoral Process has been adopted in Grenada. It began Monday January 15 and will be conducted at the 15 constituencies across the country and the Parliamentary Elections Office in St George’s. This is one of the recommendations of the Organization of American States (OAS) which witnessed the last General Elections held in November of 2003. The Computerization of the system is another of the recommendations, which has already being adopted, in an attempt to enhance the process. Registration was previously conducted from January 15 to March 31 in an election year, as stated in Act 35 of the People’s Act of the Constitution. Offices will be opened throughout the day between the 8 am and 4 pm. Registrants must bring along their birth certificate or passport. One must be a citizen of the country or a Commonwealth resident, who has resided here for a period of at least 12 months, before the date of registration, to be eligible to vote. They must also be 18 years old. There was an enumeration of the voters list in 2004, which sough to get rid of the people, who are unable to vote, for example, the dead and others who were probably on the list but had not been part of the process for more than five years. Enumeration is being held every five years in an attempt to up date the list and give the population an idea of the number of nationals, who could be voting in an election. There was an astronomical 82,000 people on the voters list in 2003, but only just about 50,000 actually voted in the elections. However, with the purging of the list in 2004 - after the Enumeration - the public is being warned that those who were registered then and obtained yellow Identification Cards will have to register again during the Continuous Registration Period. They should be in possession of the Green ID Cards that have been issued since then. “People who have Yellow ID Cards care asked to come and register because they are no longer be eligible to vote”, Assistant Supervisor of Elections Emmanuel Roberts told reporters “There are a lot of people out there still to be registered and we ask them to grab the opportunity to do so now”, Roberts added. He said that there are presently over 55,000 registered voters and that the Parliamentary Elections Office is expecting that another five to seven thousand will be added to the list. Persons having any queries can address them with the Parliamentary Elections Office, located at Woolwich Road in St George’s. The last General Elections were held November 27, 2003. The next are constitutionally due no later than January 2009.