A dejected looking parliamentary commissioner, Sherlyn Hall, is shown on television late Tuesday night informing the nation that he could not release most of the results from the constitutional referendum that night.

After watching the bungling of last week's constitutional referendum play out on national television, many Bahamians have lost faith in the ability of Parliamentary Commissioner Sherlyn Hall to ensure our elections are conducted efficiently and fairly.

We have serious concerns about what this might portend for the general election.

The danger here is that if people feel the results of the general election are not accurate and the process not fair and timely, there could be civil unrest.

The 2013 referendum took place days after Errol Bethel, the former parliamentary commissioner, retired.

So last Tuesday's referendum was the first time Hall has had to prepare for such a poll -- without any groundwork being laid by the previous parliamentary commissioner -- and to conduct it.

He seems like a nice enough man, a good reverend gentleman, but Hall appears out of his depth.

The standard of performance was not acceptable to many.

We do not recall another time when, five hours after polls closed, that Bahamians went to sleep without knowing the results of any kind of national poll for the entire island of New Providence.

After 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Hall -- looking completely uncomfortable and unsure of what was transpiring -- came on television and advised that from what he had seen, all four questions on the ballot were defeated.

But most of the results were not available, even after Progressive Liberal Party Chairman Bradley Roberts released a statement conceding that the referendum had been defeated.

This was simply incredible and pointed to serious problems in the conduct of the referendum, which took place at a time when the electorate already has great distrust for the current administration.

As the night dragged on, many people took to social media claiming that the government was intentionally holding back the results, and that some funny business was going on behind the scenes.

We had no evidence of it, but it is easy to see why so many people formed that impression.

It was not enough for Hall to tell the nation that his fax machine was down, and that power had been lost in one constituency.

As former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham noted on Tuesday night, "We know how to conduct elections."

Interestingly, in another referendum in 2002 when voters had an opportunity to approve the Ingraham administration's effort to make the parliamentary commissioner an independent post, they overwhelming rejected that question (30,418 yes votes and 57,815 no votes).

So we are left to deal with a parliamentary commissioner who has to report to the political directorate.

On Tuesday night, Ingraham also said, "I am disappointed in the government's incompetence in the conduct of the referendum election."

The following day, Minister of National Security Dr. Bernard Nottage, who has ministerial responsibility for elections and referenda, suggested to the media that it was more difficult to conduct a referendum with four questions than a general election.

What nonsense.

Nottage's excuse was unacceptable. We reject it fully.

He also had his head buried in the sand, failing to acknowledge that things went wrong with the conduct of this referendum.

"I don't know what went wrong or if anything went wrong," he told reporters on Wednesday, as the nation still waited for New Providence results.

"What I do know is this, there are four questions on each ballot.

"... The examination takes a lot longer because you have to count yes and no votes for each of the four questions."

Nottage also said, "The parliamentary commissioner informed me that what he had decided to do was wait until all the results came in for a particular constituency and release those results."

That is not a process with which I agreed and I told him so.

"He thought it was more efficient to do it that way."

Nottage's statement made no sense because it suggests that the Parliamentary Registration Department would not have been aware of the resources needed to ensure the results for each question could be counted before the end of the night and released to the public; either that or the resources were simply not provided.

The screw up on Tuesday night reflects poorly on the minister as well. It is perhaps why he came up with excuses, even if they were lame.

Identical results
On Thursday, two days after the election, Hall still could not tell us what the voter turnout was.

When National Review phoned him, he advised that he had done everything required of him legally.

He told us that if we wanted the voter turnout, we needed to add up all the yes and no votes and do our own analysis. Since only a hard copy spread sheet was provided, we needed to do it manually.

In 2016, yes.

Again, stunning and incredible.

We did add up all the votes, fully aware that there is no way it could tell us with any degree of accuracy the voter turnout.

As an example, the number of votes per question was not consistent.

There was no way of us knowing how many ballots were spoiled, how many people did not mark an 'x' to every question, and how many people actually voted in the referendum.

Even the certified results released by the parliamentary commissioner on Thursday -- two days after the referendum -- had substantial errors.

As an example, there were identical results in most instances for South Beach and Southern Shores.

All the yes results in each polling division in both constituencies were the same on question number one.

So they had the same yes total on that question -- each showing 845 yes votes to question one.

With the exception of polling division number four, all of the polling divisions in South Beach and Southern Shores also had identical no results on question number one.

On questions number two and three, each polling division in South Beach had an identical result to the corresponding polling division in Southern Shores.

So, according to the certified results released by the parliamentary commissioner, there were 588 yes votes and 2020 no votes to question number two in South Beach; and also 588 yes votes and 2020 no votes to question number two in Southern Shores.

Both South Beach and Southern Shores show 726 yes votes and 1,888 no votes on question number three.

On question number four, the results of every polling division on the yes and no votes in South Beach are identical to the results on question four in Southern Shores with one exception.

Polling division number four in South Beach had 312 yes votes to question four; Polling division number four in Southern Shores had 31 yes votes...

Candia Dames, Guardian Managing Editor

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