Dear Editor,
Lest it be lost in all the confusion and disinformation.
It’s not about whether GECOM can order a recount, or the ridiculous notion that Lowenfield is a law onto himself, or what “more votes” mean (although just maybe, the latter should be a comprehension test question for preparing to vote and/or the former before filing a lawsuit).
It’s not about “winner take all”. Some well-intentioned people have bought into this. However, this “flawed” system works well in democracies around the world. If the winner doesn’t perform, they’re voted out at the next election. In addition, it certainly hasn’t been an issue for the dominant party in the coalition while they have been in power.
It’s not about every vote must count. And it certainly shouldn’t be about the number of votes cast and the number of eligible voters. But so much chaos has been created, some of it by respected people, that it is necessary to cut through the smog.
To begin with, Lowenfield himself did good work of discrediting his and APNU/AFC claims. In two of his 5 or 6 submissions, each of which are different, Lowenfield discarded 115,000 and 275,000 votes respectively from the total of 460,000 votes. This represents 25% and 60% of the total votes cast. So much for every vote must count.
That 275,000 dead (and migrated) people voted is such a challenge to the credulity of even the most gullible that more confusion had to be sown. Time for the big guns and an approach from the other direction – challenge the number of eligible voters. They now called forth statistics to show that it was impossible for 460,000 people to have voted in the March 2nd elections, given the number of eligible voters and the population of the country.
But then Lowenfield embarrassed (if that is possible) that enterprise and disassembled the argument by increasing the number of votes cast by +15,000 to 475,000 in his last submission.
Nevertheless, much residual confusion was caused by the claim, which beneath the misdirection essentially argues that the number of votes cast could not be as high as 460,000 and the similarly for eligible voters in the range of 670,000. Chasing their numbers could go on forever. We will talk to reasonability of these claims briefly and simply.
We start at 2015, which is a good place – unless their contention is that the 2015 election is invalid and therefore the current government is invalid. All things being equal, starting from that point should satisfy the coalition who won the election and the opposition who accepted the change in government.
Each of the following 3 bullets correspond to sections in the table below.
1) In 2020 the number of eligible voters increased by 97,201 to 667,988 and the number valid votes increased by 48,410 to 460,352. These are hard numbers.
2) For a simplified understanding of how the increase in eligible voters compute, we first go to the cohort ranges from the 2012 census. People aged around the 10+ band became eligible to vote for the first time in 2020. I used 83,000.
Next, we take the House-to-House registration supervised by Lowenfield. The exercise found 16,000 new eligible voters before it was stopped. Add the numbers together and we are 99,000 eligible voters – a quick and dirty example of how it comes together.
Note we haven’t even talked about all the nationalities that have been coming to Guyana and become eligible for Guyanese citizenship – countless Chinese, Cubans, Venezuelans seeing refuge, Nigerians, Brazilians and others.
(If you want to take this further – it’s GECOM’s job, and they have been continuously removing deceased persons from the list. Take a guess at the number they have missed since 2015. Offset that against new citizens, returning retirees etc.)
The numbers used above are all verifiable. In contrast, their contention misleadingly assumes a static population then pulls flawed assumptions from the air to impute a fabrication of what the number of eligible voters aught to be. Additionally, a snag in APNU/AFC’s ointment is that 2020 cannot be invalidated without invalidating 2015. It’s as simple as that. And as mentioned before, if the argument was the 460,000 votes from the recount was too high, what do you say now that Lowenfield increases that by 15,000 to 475,000 by his latest submission.
So it’s not about the numbers of votes cast and eligible voters. And the only fraud is the Mingo and Lowenfield frauds.
In short, it’s not about the myriad of red herrings deployed to sow confusion in peoples’ minds.
It’s about the desire of one party, which lost an election, to hold on to power no matter what it costs.
Yours faithfully,
Ron Cheong
