PHILIPSBURG--The Central Voting Bureau (CVB) established the official results of the August 19 snap Parliamentary election on Thursday after three days of counting votes from all twenty voting districts and all invalid votes.
The CVB wrapped up its counting close to midnight Wednesday. While some MPs gained votes, the official results show that there were no changes in the distribution of seats or in the 15 Members of Parliament (MPs) elected as announced in the preliminary results.
The CVB had originally intended to count seven districts and all invalid votes, but subsequently decided to do a full recount of district 5 after encountering a dummy ballot in the pile of invalid votes and after noting a discrepancy. It then decided to recount all districts.
“Initially we had intended, as a Voting Bureau, because of discrepancies that we had found in the PVs [Process Verbal – Ed.], to recount 7 of the 20 districts, and then we had decided that across all 20 districts we would recount all the invalid votes. However, upon our recount of those districts and the invalid votes, more specifically with respect to District #3 St Maarten Senior Citizen Recreational Center along with District #5 the Dutch Quarter Community Center – in those two districts, we did encounter discrepancies that we did not initially expect to encounter,” Voting Bureau Chairperson Nathalie Tackling said.
“However, we were able to reconcile the numbers in these districts to an extent that brought us sufficient comfort to be able to establish an election result today [Thursday].”
The CVB intends to notify authorities of what was found during the recount.
“We did want to note for the sake of transparency, we will note all the measures in our report of what transpired during our recount process and what we found and we do want to note that for the sake of transparency that any particular findings that we found we will note these and bring them to the attention of the relevant authorities and then it is, of course, for them to do with that information what they want or what they will and whether or not any investigations take place.”
Final results
According to the final results, of the 22,750 eligible voters, the voter turnout was 13,886. Of that number, 13,696 votes were valid and 190 were invalid.
The results further show that National Alliance (NA) was the largest party with 2,262 votes earning them three seats; Unified Resilient St Maarten Movement (URSM) secured 2,224 votes earning them three seats (one of which is a residual seat); Democratic Party (DP) 2,071 votes, earning them three seats, including a residual seat; United People’s Party (UP) 2,043 votes earning the party 2 seats; Party for Progress (PFP) 1,946 landing the party two seats; Soualiga Action Movement 1,250 votes giving it one seat and Nation Opportunity Wealth (NOW) 1,243 votes giving the party one seat.
Parties that did not obtain a seat were Oualichi Movement for Change (OMC) which obtained 521 votes and Empire Culture Empowerment (ECE) 136 votes.
The 15 MPs elect are URSM’s Dr. Luc Mercelina with 1,317 personal votes making him the highest vote-getter in the elections; PFP’s Ludmila de Weever 690 votes, the second highest vote-getter; UP’s Omar Ottley 669 votes; DP’s Grisha Heyliger-Marten 480 votes; NOW’s Lyndon Lewis 446 votes; SAM’s Franklin Meyers 417 votes; DP’s Sarah Wescot-Williams 386 votes; NA’s Egbert Doran 360 votes; PFP’s Melissa Gumbs 348 votes; DP’s Viren Kotai 338 votes; NA’s Darryl York 311 votes; NA’s Ardwell Irion 305 votes; Francisco Lacroes 236 votes; URSM’s Richinel Brug 230 votes; and URSM’s Sjamira Roseburg 208 votes.
