The Senate has approved further alterations to municipalities legislation, over strong Opposition misgivings over possibilities for abuse.

The effects of the Municipalities Amendment Act will be felt soon, in the upcoming May 2015 elections for Hamilton and St George, which will be administrated by the Parliamentary Registrar and not the secretaries for the relevant Corporations.

Home Affairs Minister Michael Fahy maintained that it struck the right balance between residential and business votes in municipal elections.

But several around the table disagreed — Opposition Senators Diallo Rabain, Renee Ming and Marc Daniels all voted against the Act, as did Independent Senator Joan Dillas-Wright, who said there was widespread public misunderstanding of its implications.

“If you have more than one company, and you nominate somebody, we can’t say honestly that the business owner will not influence the individual who is going to cast the vote,” she told the Upper House.

Sen Daniels said the amendments undermined the principle of “one man, one vote”, with the potential for business owners to tip the vote using proxies.

But the legislation passed, with seven votes in favour and four against.

Sen Fahy has indicated Government’s support for the 2010 reforms under the Progressive Labour Party administration that expanded the right to vote to all residents of municipalities. However, the One Bermuda Alliance Government has also advocated for business ratepayers to have representation.

“We are not against businesses being able to exercise the right to vote,” Sen Daniels said. “What we are concerned with is the amount of votes that can be abused under this system.”

Sen Fahy argued that cases of business owners being able to use proxies to tamper with voting were “very unlikely”.

The Act calls for three elections to be held simultaneously: one for mayor, one for municipal residents, one for business ratepayers.

Candidates for mayor can be nominated by municipal residents or by business ratepayers, and will be selected by all voters. Candidates for residents’ Councillors will be nominated by municipal residents, and candidates for business ratepayers’ councillors will be nominated by ratepayers.

A candidate for business ratepayers’ councillor will not be allowed to also be nominated as a candidate for residents’ councillor.

Only those who are ordinarily resident in the municipality can register as residents, and only owners and occupiers of businesses can sign up as ratepayers.

Conceding that there had been apprehensions over the legislation, Sen Fahy said that persons registered as business ratepayers would not be entitled to appear on the register more than once, whether in their own right or as nominees — and thus only vote once. “It is conceivable to have one individual person own the controlling interest in multiple companies, which in turn own or occupy valuation units and each may, in turn, appoint different nominees to vote on behalf of those valuation units,” Sen Fahy said.

“However, this scenario is very unlikely, and has to be balanced against the administrative unworkability of a scheme that pierces the corporate veil.

“It is certainly unhelpful to talk about hypothetical situations where a single person owns ten different companies.

“Finally, contrary to what the Opposition may say, there is no ambiguity in the legislation.

“This Bill simply reflects a policy choice made by the Government.”