BALLOT COUNTING DISCREPANCIES EXPLAINED

Adjustments made to the counting sheets do not affect the overall final standings of the candidates in the June 16th general elections, it was announced here last Friday, according to Supervisor of Elections Ms. Juliette Penn.

In a press release, she reported that it was drawn to her attention on 19th June by the Chairman of the Virgin Islands Party Mr. Carvin Malone, that there appeared to be certain discrepancies in the reported figures for the Territorial balloting in the 3rd and 5th districts, where the overall total of votes cast was higher than possible given the number of ballots recorded. "On reviewing the figures as published, I confirmed the discrepancies and set about investigating them," the Supervisor stated. This was done by herself, the Returning Officer for the Territorial District, the Deputy Supervisor of Elections, and the Assistant Returning Officer (Data Entry Manager for the Territorial Count).

Ms. Penn said she carefully re-checked the counting sheets for each district and discovered that although the scores for all 13 candidates had been correctly tallied, three typographical errors had been made in entering the totals for the final report in respect of the Third and the Fifth Districts at the date entry centre.

The error in District Three concerned candidate Conrad Maduro and in the Long Trench polling division of District Five, Eileene Lucia Parsons and Ronnie W. Skelton, according to the Elections Office. The office said the corrected report is now published and will be gazetted.

"I must also state that the adjustments do not affect the overall final standings of the candidates in the election. Those declared by the Returning Officer on 17th June 2003 remain so," Ms. Penn declared. She said she has conducted a thorough investigation as to what went wrong and it was confirmed that the errors crept in due to human error while inputting the tally scores in the final report and that they were inadvertent. "I need not say how deeply I regret the error that occurred and that I will ensure that steps will be taken to prevent such a recurrence in the future," the Supervisor of Elections concluded.