Premier: ‘One man, one vote’ in place by 2017 election

Reversing earlier comments that indicated his government would not be able to resolve the issue before the next general election, Cayman Islands Premier Alden McLaughlin said Wednesday that the Progressives-led administration would seek to implement “one man, one vote” by mid-2015.  

The premier said he would personally bring a motion to the floor of the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday seeking to implement a single-member district voting system for both Grand Cayman and the Sister Islands. As it stands now, there would be 16 single-member voting districts on Grand Cayman and two single-member districts for Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. However, whether the number of legislative seats might increase to 19 to prevent even numbers of MLAs and the potential for a “hung parliament” following an election was left up to a soon-to-be appointed Electoral Boundary Commission to decide.  

Cayman’s current voting system involves a mixture of single-member districts and multi-member constituencies. Depending on where a person lives, he or she can vote anywhere from one to six times for elected representatives. The change, when it occurs, would mean that all voting districts in the Cayman Islands would send only one representative to the Legislative Assembly.  

Premier McLaughlin said he believed it would be “uncharitable” to view the move to implement one man, one vote in the form of single-member constituent districts as an “about-face” by himself or his government. However, he acknowledged that pressure from some opposition members of the Legislative Assembly on the issue had helped speed matters along.  

“There’s no question that the agitation by the opposition has caused the government to deal with the matter … right now, and for that I am very grateful,” Mr. McLaughlin said, adding that he was keen to get the issue of how the country votes in 2017 “out of the way.”  

“For the average person, I don’t want to say [one man, one vote] is an irrelevance, but this is not high up on their list of priorities.” 

North Side MLA Ezzard Miller and East End MLA Arden McLean, who are the sole elected representatives within their respective districts and supporters of “one man, one vote,” plan to hold a press conference Thursday afternoon to give their responses to the government’s announcement. 

The Electoral Boundary Commission, which has already been called twice since 2003 in attempts to redraw Cayman’s voting districts, would have to be appointed by Governor Helen Kilpatrick following consultation with Mr. McLaughlin and Opposition Leader McKeeva Bush. The premier acknowledged that another three or four months would be needed for the commission to complete its work, but said that the added time was an unavoidable delay.  

According to the motion supporting one man, one vote filed in the Legislative Asssembly, the last Electoral Boundary Commission in 2010 proposed three different “options” for voting district lines based on a population of 15,300 registered electors. By the May 2013 general election, the number of registered voters had increased to 18,434 – a 20 percent rise in less than three years.  

Mr. McLaughlin said this increase could not be ignored in any current attempt to redraw voting lines seeking to create single-member districts. Some amendments would also have to be made to the territory’s Election Law, he said. All of that work should be completed by June 2015 “absolutely,” he said, leaving the territory more than enough time for a public education campaign to make voters aware of the election system changes. 

As far as possible, the single-member constituent districts will have an equal number of voters, Mr. McLaughlin said. However, he acknowledged that some “historical boundaries” of the existing voting districts would have to be taken into account during the redistricting effort.  

“We have to start from the premise that there are three districts that will not be able to comply with what would be the average in the other districts,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “That is Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which would actually be two electoral districts, and North Side and East End. The number of registered voters in East End and North Side are roughly 600 each and in Cayman Brac almost exactly 1,000. Cayman Brac is required to have a minimum of two elected representatives, so there’s just no way they can ever meet what would otherwise be the national average.”  

Under the 2010 Electoral Boundary Commission’s single-member district “option,” the largest voting districts in George Town had approximately 950 voters, while the smaller districts of East End and North Side kept about 600 voters each. Given the 20 percent increase in voters recorded since 2010, there is the possibility that some larger voting districts in George Town could end up with double the number of voters in East End and North Side.  

Unlike the 2010 redistricting proposal, Mr. McLaughlin said, the upcoming effort is likely to produce only one voting map that legislators could then either accept or reject. 

Opposition  

Opposition Leader Bush, a longtime outspoken opponent of single-member voting districts, said Wednesday that he would vote against the government motion as set out by Mr. McLaughlin.  

“I certainly will not support it because I do not believe it is the right thing for our country,” Mr. Bush said. “My concern is for the number of people who do not have a job, the number of students who – even if they got a scholarship – didn’t get their money on time. I’m concerned about the number of houses that have lost their electricity and their water, the number of people who have come back from university and can’t get a job. 

Mr. Bush said he agreed with the move to call a new boundary commission, but said he’d rather see a referendum called on the issue. A referendum in July 2012 on the question of implementing one man, one vote passed by a two-to-one margin, but with a lower-than-usual voter turnout.  

“I imagine that the premier is under fire from his group to put this in place and I know how that is, so I empathize with his situation,” Mr. Bush said. “But I’m not going to agree because I do not believe it will help Cayman.” 

Mr. Bush also questioned whether the 16 districts on Grand Cayman would each receive an equal number of voters. “How else is it going to be done if you’re going to have fairness?” he asked.  

At-large seats 

Mr. McLaughlin said there were no members of the ruling government who opposed single-member voting districts or the general principle of equality of votes. Any dissent within the government on the one man, one vote issue was merely over how such a system should be put in place.  

Some MLAs favored the addition of “at-large” elected seats, those being for politicians elected territory-wide. An earlier proposal made by the Progressives-led government would have created 15 single-member voting districts and added three or four at-large seats, for instance.  

The Electoral Boundary Commission would be precluded from considering at-large constituencies in its upcoming efforts, Mr. McLaughlin said.  

“{At large voting districts] were an attempt on our part to address the understandable concern about the … smallness of the size of some of the electoral districts [under single member constituencies],” he said. However, a change in the Cayman Islands Constitution Order, 2009, would likely have been required in order to make such a change, which the premier said would result in a delay beyond the May 2017 g
eneral election.