Whatever new voting system the Cayman Islands creates prior to the May 2017 general elections, it’s likely that another Electoral Boundary Commission will be needed to redraw district lines – a process that could take many months.
Works Minister Kurt Tibbetts said Friday that recommendations from the 2010 Electoral Boundary Commission will not suffice, even if government decides to implement 18 single-member districts ahead of the next election.
“There have been several thousand bodies added to the voters list and also there will have been several hundred changes of address,” Mr. Tibbetts said.
At the time the last boundary survey was done, just more than 15,000 voters had registered in the Cayman Islands. The divisions of voters among the 16 single-member districts created by the 2010 boundary commission report were based on that overall number.
By the May 2013 general election, there were nearly 18,500 registered voters.
Mr. Tibbetts said that figure is likely to increase during the more than three years until the next election.
“I am of the firm opinion, and that’s all it can be at this point … that the boundaries would have to be reconstructed again,” he said.
If the government chooses to go with fewer single-member districts, as has been suggested by Premier Alden McLaughlin, it gets even more complicated. The boundary commission would then be drawing 14 or 15 single-member districts, each of which would have a significantly larger population.
Assuming East End, North Side and Cayman Brac-Little Cayman voting districts were left untouched in the redistricting, Mr. Tibbetts said there would still be the matter of completely restructuring the three largest voting districts of Bodden Town, George Town and West Bay.
“I am pretty certain that what was done four years ago would not work today,” he said.
Following the report from the Electoral Boundary Commission in 2010, three new MLA seats added three new Legislative Assembly members to the existing 15. Two of those new seats were added in George Town’s multimember district and another was in Bodden Town’s multimember constituency.
The then-United Democratic Party government rejected recommendations for the single-member districts plan in the 2010 commission report. A third recommendation made in that report was the creation of a new multimember district in the prospect area with three new MLAs. That proposal was also set aside.
Under the 2010 plan for single-member constituencies, the largest number of voters in one district on Grand Cayman, 969 people, was almost 70 per cent greater in terms of registered voters than the smallest district, which at the time had 571 voters. Essentially, under the boundary commission’s plan, East End, North Side and the Sister Islands districts would be allowed to maintain a much smaller number of registered voters than the newly created single-member districts in George Town, West Bay and Bodden Town.
With the change in district voter populations that occurred between 2012 and 2013, that disparity potentially becomes even larger.
George Town now has 7,441 registered voters which, if split evenly among six districts would equate to about 1,240 voters per district. The smallest single member district, North Side, now has 599 registered voters – meaning the difference between the George Town and North Side voter population would be more than 100 percent under the new voter totals.
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