In 1992, the celebrated year of the return of democracy after much sought after electoral reforms, including house-to-house (HtH) registration, the population of Guyana was about 748,600 and there were 348,195 registered voters. In 2015, the year of the last general and regional elections, the population was 767,432, an increase of 18,832 or about 2.5%, but the number of registered voters was 585,722, an increase of 237,527 or 68.2%. It is then no wonder that on the face of it, President David Granger has claimed that the just expired electoral list was bloated by some 200,000 voters. Recently, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo attempted to explain the problem with the list in terms of a decrease and sudden increase in the votes going to the PPP/C. (Guyana Chronicle: 01/09/2018). I believe that both of the above approaches are problematical: the former does not pay sufficient attention to the age distribution of the population and the latter to the appearance of the AFC on the political scene.
