Just days ahead of the Bahamas’ scheduled advance polling on April 30, a growing electoral dispute has erupted after opposition Free National Movement (FNM) figures revealed dozens of approved voters have been wrongly omitted from the official advance poll register, with election officials dismissing complaints with shrugs that have further enraged the party.
Travis Robinson, an FNM candidate running in the upcoming general election, told local media that nine eligible voters who met all requirements for early voting were left off the finalized certified list, despite having applied for and received formal authorization to cast advance ballots. Among those impacted are three voters who will be out of the country on the main election day, May 12, meaning they will be completely unable to vote if the error is not corrected before advance polling opens.
Robinson explained he submitted all advance voting applications on April 23 on behalf of three groups of eligible early voters: senior citizens, registered poll workers who would be working on main election day, and voters traveling abroad. When he returned to collect documentation two days later, he only received required L-form certificates for the senior citizens and traveling voters. To date, he says he has not received any L-form certificates for his poll worker applicants, leaving all of them locked out of the advance poll.
The full scope of the error only became clear once the official certified advance register was published. Robinson confirmed all nine applicants met every eligibility requirement set out by election authorities, but their names were still excluded from the final list. When he escalated the issue to senior election officials, including Parliamentary Commissioner Harrison Thompson, he was told there was no way to fix the error ahead of polling.
“I subsequently spoke with a senior official at the registry who basically told me, ‘such is life, things happen, we move on,’” Robinson recalled. “I later contacted Mr Thompson, who gave me a similar response, that unfortunately there’s nothing he can do and that it is what it is.”
Robinson called the dismissive response completely unacceptable, warning that the disenfranchisement of these nine voters could be enough to swing the final election result in his competitive constituency. He pointed to recent Bahamian political history to underscore the stakes, noting that a former prime minister once lost his parliamentary seat by a margin of just four votes. He has issued an urgent call for Thompson to immediately amend the advance register to add the missing voters before polling begins.
The impacted voters, Robinson added, are “highly upset” by the error, particularly the three overseas travelers who have no path to vote if the issue remains unaddressed.
The controversy is not isolated to Robinson’s constituency, according to FNM chairman Duane Sands. Sands confirmed that multiple other FNM candidates, including himself and fellow candidate Heather Hunt, have reported identical issues with the advance poll register. He said that beyond omitting eligible voters who completed all required steps, the register also includes the names of voters who never even submitted applications for early voting.
Worse, Sands added, the register contains glaring, basic errors that raise serious questions about the integrity of the process: some entries list voters with birth dates that have not yet occurred, meaning people who have not even been born are listed as approved advance voters.
“When you look at the state of the register — people on the register with birthdays that have not yet come, people who according to the data haven’t even been born yet — and then there are persons who are on the advance poll register who did not apply, in some instances willing to swear an affidavit that they did not apply, and yet they are on the advance poll register, you wonder what is going on,” Sands said.
Sands is now calling for the immediate removal of Parliamentary Commissioner Harrison Thompson, arguing that the chaotic errors undermine the legitimacy of the upcoming election. He said the severity of the mistakes leaves two possible explanations, neither of which justify Thompson keeping his post.
“When we see the mess, the chaos, we can ask whether this is just incompetence or whether this is a deliberate act by someone who ought to be relieved of his role as Parliamentary Commissioner forthwith,” he said.
In an official response to the growing controversy, the Parliamentary Registration Department acknowledged the errors, attributing them to limited typographical mistakes and an unexpected technical system glitch. The department downplayed the severity of the issues, arguing that the mistakes will not impact the final outcome of the election.
“These are not consequential to the outcome of the election, as the voter’s card and counterfoil contain the accurate information that will be relied upon on voting day,” the department said in a statement. It urged political leaders to stop framing the errors as evidence of widespread systemic failure, noting that minor processing issues are a normal part of election administration. “The Department remains committed to protecting the integrity of the electoral process,” the statement added.
The ruling Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) has pushed back against FNM’s criticism, condemning the opposition’s claims as a “reckless attack on Bahamian democracy.”
“The Bahamas has earned its reputation as one of the strongest democracies in the region through decades of peaceful elections and independent institutions,” the PLP said in its official statement. “To suggest otherwise, for political convenience, damages that reputation abroad and weakens the confidence of Bahamians at home.”