Out of in total 22,553 voting cards, 19,479 ended up going to Postal Services St. Maarten (PSS) for delivery ahead of the January 11 election (see related story). This means 3,074 were collected at the Administration Building over five days, each for several districts.
Whether that makes the early pick-up option successful is hard to say. The main goal was to reach persons whose registered address might not be correct or hard to find.
Recent experience had shown that quite a few would wait until even Election Day to go looking for theirs or request a duplicate, with all the stress and inconvenience this brought. It will be interesting to see if significantly fewer appear at the last minute now.
PSS starts distribution this Wednesday, so those who haven’t already retrieved theirs and fail to get it in the mail by Christmas should inquire at the Civil Registry well ahead of going to the polls. As Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs pointed out in the Friday/Saturday edition, the right to vote is one many have fought for and ought to be taken seriously.
Whether her wish for a high turnout comes true very much remains to be seen. One can hardly deny there is a considerable sense of disillusion in local politics, especially since country status was achieved per 10-10-10.
However, staying away from the polls solves absolutely nothing. Errors in judgement by candidates of the past are certainly no reason to give up altogether.
Keep in mind that not everything can be blamed on leaders either, including the impact of hurricanes, pandemics, wars abroad, etc. The fact that no party has so far achieved a majority in Parliament and coalitions requiring compromise were thus always needed must also be taken into account.
Besides, according to a saying attributed to Winston Churchill, “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
