{"id":306898,"date":"2023-08-16T12:25:05","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T16:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/?p=306898"},"modified":"2023-08-16T19:32:35","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T23:32:35","slug":"astaphan-defends-diasporans-right-to-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/governance\/astaphan-defends-diasporans-right-to-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Astaphan defends diasporans’ right to vote"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Senior Counsel Tony Astaphan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Senior Counsel Anthony Astaphan has said that citizens of Dominica living overseas should be given the right to vote during general elections.<\/p>\n

He made that statement during the first group consultation on electoral reform for members of the legal fraternity held at the State House Conference Centre on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn recent times we have seen Commonwealth countries like Britain, for argument’s sake, removing the 15-year rule on the right to vote, Canada removing the 5-year rule to vote, Australia has done the same thing. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s the position in Africa, we will soon find out,\u201d he said. \u201cThe developing international best practice is to give the right to citizens to vote either in their constituency in which they may have lived before they traveled for however long they may have been overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to him, serious consideration needs to be made to remove the five-year rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe migration of citizens who go elsewhere for greener pastures should not be punished for not being able to travel back for 10 days or 14 days or 5 days,\u201d Mr. Astaphan remarked.<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cI think serious consideration should be given to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mr. Astaphan pointed out that on the question of cleansing the voters list, the law is there, but it has nothing to do with resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur current legislation requires every electoral list to be published in all the constituencies with a very clear notice that you have the right to object to anybody whose name is on the list if you believe they may be not have been resident in the constituency or in the existence of the old law, overseas for more than five years,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Mr. Astaphan argued that he is not in favour of the idea of a fixed date for elections, \u201cbecause that requires a constitutional amendment and that is not part of electoral reform.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior Counsel Anthony Astaphan has said that citizens of Dominica living overseas should be given the right to vote during general elections. He made that statement during the first group consultation on electoral reform for members of the legal fraternity…","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":236403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[286,77,235,271,9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-governance","category-homepage","category-homepage-carousel","category-legislation","category-news","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAstaphan defends diasporans' right to vote - Dominica News Online<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/governance\/astaphan-defends-diasporans-right-to-vote\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Astaphan defends diasporans' right to vote - Dominica News Online\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Senior Counsel Anthony Astaphan has said that citizens of Dominica living overseas should be given the right to vote during general elections. 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