Polls close after 80% turnout

(CNS): The polling stations closed at 6:00 pm this evening after 12,362 Caymanians cast their vote in the country’s General Election on 20 May representing 80.56% of the entire electorate. Meanwhile, not all of those voters chose to take part in the referendum with less than 70% of people (10,677) casting their vote in that ballot.  Supervisor of Elections Kearney Gomez confirmed that, aside from the incidents at two polling station of undue influence which are being investigated (See CNS story), the day was ”hectic” but the dual polling went very well.

With 78 stations now involved in counting the ballots, Gomez said that he expected the first results should be in from East End and North Side by around 8:30 pm, followed by Cayman Brac and Little Cayman around 9:00pm, then Bodden Town at approximately 10:00pm, and ending at around 12.00 am with the results from West Bay and George Town.

“I have challenged our counters and returning officers to have the full General Election Result by midnight,” he added.

Gomez then explained that the referendum ballot boxes are being moved under security to the Election Command Centre from the six district, were they will be watched overnight before that count starts at around 10:00am tomorrow morning at the Command Centre.

With 10,677 voters in the referendum, in order for the new constitution to pass it will need to receive at least 5,339 ‘yes’ votes.

On the preliminary turn out statistics from the Elections Office, the highest voter turn out was in East End where 86.26% of the electorate cast their vote in the General Election and 71.02% of people took part in the referendum. The lowest voter turn out for the General Election was in George Town, where only 77% of the 5,968 voters came out but almost 70% did take part in the referendum.

The lost percentage of the vote in the referendum was on the Sister Islands where only 64.34% voted in the referendum but almost 84% took part in the General Election.