Those still in doubt whom to vote for have run out of time, as St. Maarten goes to the polls today, Monday. With 22,302 registered voters and 15 Parliament seats it’s not hard to figure out that – based on the usual turnout of some 70 per cent – close to 1,000 votes will
be needed to capture one.
The latter only goes for a party’s first seat, which must be earned outright before the party can vie for a so-called residual seat. This threshold is the second obstacle parties currently not represented in the legislature must overcome, after having obtained support for their candidate lists from one per cent of the valid votes in the last election.
With a total of nine parties there is obviously plenty to choose from. Therefore, a lack of options should be no excuse for citizens failing to make use of their sacred democratic right to elect representatives for the next four years.
After all, abstaining accomplishes nothing but reducing the turnout. And while blank protest votes are counted separately from invalid votes that often regard wrongly filled-in ballots, neither helps determine the final result in terms of the seat division and highest vote-getters per party that will be assigned one.
People who really don’t favour any of the 125 candidates can apply the “by process of elimination” strategy, selecting what they consider the least worst of the parties and then its candidates. That might seem a bit of a stretch, but it’s still better than not voting at all.
