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Charlotte Amalie
Friday, April 26, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesDo You Know Your Voting Rights?

Do You Know Your Voting Rights?

Dear Source:
At the 2012 Annual Meeting of the League of Women Voters–Virgin Islands, one of the speakers was Supervisor of Elections John Abramson.
Did you know that:
1. the voting machines we in the Virgin Islands currently use have a permanent, detailed, electronic record of each and every vote cast?
2. not one of the individual American states gives the voter any kind of receipt or paper indicator of votes cast?
3. approximately fifty thousand VI permanent residents are registered voters?
4. at most, only approximately two-thirds of the registered voters ever come out and actually cast a vote?
5. for any one election, no more than approximately one thousand voters request an absentee ballot, and about only one half of those are returned, including absentees in the military?
6. the supervisor of elections heads an agency which reports neither to the Executive nor Legislative branches of government but only to the Board of Elections?
7. as a result of the 1998 non-binding referendum re: the size of the VI Legislature, and the resultant decision of the Congress, the authority to change that Legislature to a part-time Legislature, or the number who serve in it at any one time, or the salaries of elected Senators, lies in the hands of the voters of the Virgin Islands through the power of initiative through local legislation?
Norma S. Levin
40-year resident of St. Thomas

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