With more than 6,000 people having cast ballots in Tuesday's advanced general election poll, Parliamentary Commissioner Errol Bethel said yesterday the Parliamentary Registration Department has put measures in place to ensure that none of those people will be able to vote again on election day.
Bethel said his office has been very concerned about the question of 'double-voting' since legislation to expand the advanced poll was passed.
"We're going through a very tedious process right now of making sure that all of the counterfoils that were used [Tuesday] are sorted and put back in those tins," Bethel said.
"We have those marked and we know who the people are who voted. We want to make it clear that we have the counterfoils and we know who did vote and we're going to put all of those in place.
"So if [those persons who voted] appear, once the counterfoil is pulled, immediately the person who pulled the counterfoil will be able to show that to the presiding officer and say, 'this person has cast a ballot already'."
A counterfoil is an identical copy of a stamped voter's card that the Parliamentary Registration Department keeps to record who has voted.
Nearly 8,000 people were registered to vote in the advanced poll.
Though he could not give an exact figure of the number of people who voted Tuesday, Bethel said the turnout was "very high".
Bethel said that thousands voted at the Kendal G.L. Isaacs Gymnasium, one of two advanced polling centers on New Providence.
"At the Kendal Isaacs gym, I know that more than 2,200 people voted," Bethel said. "The other location (The College of The Bahamas' Tourism Training Centre) had more people than the Kendal Isaacs gym, so I'm sure the number from there would be higher. The constituencies with the larger numbers were put at the Tourism Training Centre.
"The numbers in the Family Islands were not big, except for in Freeport, where the number [of voters] exceeded 1,000."
There were 7,865 people registered to vote in the advanced poll, including election workers, agents of political parties, defence force, police force and customs and immigration officers, overseas voters and special voters.

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