Party for Progress Member of Parliament Melissa Gumbs submitted a letter discussing a small but significant change to St. Maarten’s election day setup to Minister of General Affairs and Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs on Wednesday, September 14, 2022.
The letter focuses on vote-buying and includes a request for the Prime Minister to consider making an amendment to article 12, point 2 of the existing ‘Kiesbesluit’ (electoral decree). Gumbs believes that this would be a concrete step on the road to electoral reform.
Article 12, point 2 regulates the sizing, appearance, and setup of the voting booth, which is used at the polling stations during the country’s Parliamentary elections. Gumbs’ request focuses on removing the sentences that involve the placement of a dark curtain across the voting booth, an accessory that both encourages and allows the unfortunate practice of vote-buying.
“I applaud the Prime Minister’s efforts to again jumpstart the conversation around electoral reform,” Gumbs commented. “The ongoing survey to discuss the finer points of electoral reform, particularly as we look at our Constitution and electoral law, is a welcome introduction to the public discussion. But, there are other, smaller steps that also fall under the umbrella of electoral reform that I believe get left out due to the focus being on grander, legislative changes.”
“To combat this, we have seen that the use of cell phones have been banned in the polling stations locally and elsewhere,” Gumbs said. “But the surrounding regulation has to be updated to allow such a ban to be properly enforced. Right now, there is nothing stopping the voter from going into the booth, taking a picture of their ballot, casting their vote and then providing that photographic proof to collect whatever funds they were promised for their vote.”
Vote-buying is an issue that has impacted elections across the globe, and particularly in Sint Maarten. It is defined as a scenario where voters are offered money or material goods in exchange for casting their vote for a particular candidate. Historically in larger, early democracies, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, it was a public secret to engage in vote-buying. The implementation of a secret ballot and the introduction of the voting booth were done to curb this practice, but, as Gumbs says in her letter, the advancement of technology has meant that vote-buying has found new ways to thrive in modern democracies. This, she believes, requires an update to other rules surrounding free and fair elections.
Gumbs cites in her letter that there is precedence within the Kingdom for removing the curtain from the voting booth. In the Netherlands’ Election Decree, article J5 describes the voting booth as having “a back wall and two side walls, each at least one meter wide and two meters high.” The dimensions of the booths are the same or similar throughout the Kingdom.
“No mention is made of a curtain or other blockade between the voter and the rest of the room,” Gumbs commented. “In our sister island of Curacao, the curtain has also been removed, but the voter is still afforded privacy with the two-meter high and one-meter wide walls. The physical setup of the booth will remain. But with the removal of the curtain, security at the polling stations will be able to properly enforce the rule of no cell phones, thus ensuring that our elections are truly fair and free of fraud.”
The Kiesbesluit, as a national decree, falls outside of Parliament’s legislative jurisdiction, but Gumbs said she hopes that the Prime Minister, the Council of Ministers and her colleagues see value in taking this small reform step to improve and protect the integrity of the country’s electoral