Click here to print
In Voter's List Challenge, Attorney Used Unconventional Approach
Tue, November 26, 2024
And while the elections and boundaries office was one thing - it was much more complicated than that for his attorney Jackie Willoughby. She was facing three senior attorneys including Dickie Bradley and Leeroy Banner with input from their client, Senior counsel and PUP area rep Michel Chebat,

The opposition alone dwarfed the sole practitioner, not to mention that she was attempting to disqualify voters in the annual review process, which we can't recall being done before.

It is routine to challenge voters in the transfer period, or the monthly revisions - but the annual review has a much higher threshold for disqualifications since the voters are already on the list:

JACQUELINE Willoughby, Attorney - UDP CAYO NORTH
"It's a hard threshold, actually! It's an extremely difficult threshold because on each of the levels, you can only prove, you can only cause an inference to be drawn to the court. And that inference has to be so strong that the court is moved to either a.) visit the locus, or the evidence that you produce is so strong that it would satisfy that threshold, to the extent that the judge would make its determination in saying, these people must be removed off the list."

Jules Vasquez
"And the threshold is high because if the challenge is successful, these persons will have effectively lost their franchise, temporarily, at least."

JACQUELINE Willoughby, Attorney - UDP CAYO NORTH
"Temporarily at least they would have lost their franchise because it would mean you are - whether or not you are convicted - you are committing an offence against elections. And in this event, the offense is you never lived at that address."

"And so we were able to move the court sufficiently with evidence that we produced for us to go visit the locus. And the locus is the actual addresses that these people stated. And once we had gotten there, and you could see we had an impromptu court on site, people were sworn, questions were raised, and we learned that these people indeed never lived there."

"As a matter of fact, one of the houses on Constellation Boulevard was so small you couldn't even fit two good dog in there and I anatomy. And this was being said no to have like 24 people living in there."

"Our duty as the claimant was to at least bring the strongest inference that we could bring to prove what we are alleging, and we were successful in getting, I think it was about 22 persons off the list."

Jules Vasquez
"Now, during this process, you have to go very close with the entire registration process. You had to go into the bones of the process. And what impression did you leave with?"

JACQUELINE Willoughby, Attorney - UDP CAYO NORTH
"Not an extremely great impression. I'm of the mindset that politicians tend to manipulate the process. That's one. I'm also of the mindset that there is some padding of the voters list."

Close this window