THERE was a rare demonstration of Bermudian political bi-partisanship earlier this year. Only it was one born from the fact that Government and the Opposition both desperately needed to come up with a face-saving strategy rather than the two parties finally making a common cause over a commonsensical issue.

One of the rationales quietly advanced by spinmeisters in both political parties to account for the rock-bottom turn-out at the Pembroke East Central by-election is that voters did not so much boycott the poll as, well, got lost on their way to it.

Once your chortling subsides, pause to reflect on this - the possibility that hundreds of voters were effectively disenfranchised because the polling station had been moved. There's probably more than a little truth to this argument.

Generations of Bermudian voters give no more thought to where they cast their votes than salmon do when they swim against torrential currents to return to their spawning grounds. It's just something that's imprinted on their political DNA. Voters in Pembroke East Central have historically trotted over to Dellwood Middle School to exercise their democratic rights.

However, presumably because the by-election was called during the school term, the polling station was moved to St. Paul AME Church Centennial Hall for the by-election.

This fact was reasonably well advertised. But on the day of the by-election, there are reports that dozens of would-be voters - well-informed enough to have wanted to participate but acting out of habit rather than absorbing what they had read in that day's newspapers - still turned up at Dellwood.

While some were presumably redirected to the church, others doubtless went home again when they discovered students vaulting horses and shimmying up ropes in the school gymnasium instead of the expected array of polling booths and returning officers.

It's a credible enough rationale.

Such confusion when combined with voter fatigue from four years of non-stop political upheavals, an unenthusiasic public response to the three candidates whose names appeared on the ballot paper and common-or-garden Bermudian apathy probably did contribute to the fact that significantly less than 50 per cent of eligible voters in Pembroke East Central participated in the by-election - a dubious new record in Bermuda politics.

In the coming weeks or months all Bermudian voters will go to the polls. Or at least they will try to. It seems an odds-on certainty that a large number may get lost on the way.

In fact, come polling day the Pembroke East Central scenario may well be extended island-wide given the introduction of a potentially hugely destablising factor into the always unpredictable Bermudian political equation: an electoral map so new the ink is still wet on the freshly demarcated constituency boundaries, a map that very few Bermudians are even halfway acquainted with.

Not only does it seem likely that many voters will not know where their polling stations are, they could well be clueless as to what new constituency (or "zone") they are registered in. If, that is, the Parliamentary Registrar has earmarked them for the right zone at all.

The upcoming General Election will mark the most radical departure in Bermudian politics since the first two-party, Westminster-style contest in 1968. Four constituencies have entirely ceased to exist since the last ballot in 1998. The boundaries of the remaining 36 have been redrawn, the voters in them redistricted.

Based on anecdotal as well as polling evidence, it seems certain that at this time fewer than one-in-ten Bermudian voters are aware of what new constituency (or "zone") they are supposedly registered in.

Government has yet to initiate any programmes that could even remotely pass for voter education schemes. Even the much-trumpeted push-button access to the Parliamentary Registrar's web site does not help: it hasn't been updated for a year. Voters are still listed according to their old constituencies, not the new ones. There is, in fact, scarcely a word about the island's retooled constitutional machinery except for an extract from the Boundaries Commission report - no maps comparing and contrasting the old constituencies to the new ones, no list of polling stations, nothing of practical value. What information that is posted tends to be as out of date and misleading as yesterday's weather report ("There are 20 constituencies - two in each of eight parishes and four in Pembroke").

Similarly, the Progressive Labour Party and United Bermuda Party are both still in Stealth campaign mode, their respective slates of candidates - and the constituencies they will be contesting - entirely invisible on most voters' radar screens. So it's not even possible for Bermudians to associate old and familiar names and faces with their new districts, let alone link political first-timers to these constituencies.

The watershed 1968 General Election, the first held under Universal Franchise as well as the first to include four Pembroke constituencies to more accurately reflect the demographics of what was then the most densely populated parish, was preceded by intense and remorseless barrages of publicity that lasted for months.

The idea was to raise voter awareness of the new constitutional arrangements that had been put into place and to make them as understandable - as user-friendly, to use the current jargon - as possible. Aside from the information disseminated by the two major political parties (not to mention the also-ran Bermuda Democratic Party and a small army of Independent candidates), the Government also did its best to ensure that not only were all Bermudians aware of the fact they could now vote but would actually do so.

As a consequence, more than 90 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots at that poll.

The pending General Election will be no less historic than the one contested in 1968 - but maybe for all of the wrong reasons.

CONTEMPLATE this. Aside from any methodological flaws used to compile the voter rolls - and the evidence suggests there are more than a few - the lists to be used at this General Election are four years out of date. The elimination of annual re-registration on this Government's watch means that people who have moved or died since 1999 are still eligible to vote; so by definition the new boundaries cannot more accurately reflect any new population shifts than the ones they replaced.

The voter rolls are as frozen in time as a fly embedded in amber. Parochial decisions facing people in Smith's (or whatever zone or zones that parish has now been dissected into) will also be made by people who now live in Warwick and Hamilton and Southampton. Those same people are, of course, precluded from making parochial decisions in their new constituencies unless they have voluntarily re-registered since they upped stakes. Human nature and the seventh deadly sin being what they are, it's fair to say that most migrants will not have bothered to do so.

The fact a four-year tally of the dead is still included on the voter roll is a new development in Bermudian politics and not a desirable one. The deceased have been known to determine the outcomes of any number of races in any number of jurisdictions where they are still included on voter rolls on election day.

What could be termed their absentee ballots are cast for them by party hustlers flashing false IDs or doctored versions of the genuine articles purchased from bereaved families. It's a situation wide open to abuse by the less salubrious elements to be found in any political party machine and needs to be rectified. Immediately.

Public confidence in the Parliamentary registration process is currently plunging at much the same rate - and with much the same white-knuckle fear - as a bungee jumper who leapt off the lip of the Grand Canyon and suddenly remembered he forgot to tie his granny knot. The figures might not be quantifiable as yet but even the most casual of straw-polls at a coffee shop or a club reveals an alarming vacuum of general knowledge about Bermuda's reworked political arrangements.

Given what is, after all, a completely new electoral map, a voter re-registration campaign was not only necessary, it should have been a priority. But the subterfuge and skulduggery that has been attendant on the entire constitutional reform process in Bermuda meant it was perhaps inevitable that such a practical step should also have fallen victim to these strange practices.

It seems, based on the experiences of the incumbent MPs in Devonshire South, there is at least a 15 per cent margin of error in the voter rolls. If reflected island-wide, that is more than sufficient to not only alter the outcomes of individual Parliamentary races but to throw the final result of a General Election into very serious question.

There were somewhere in the region of 37,000 registered voters in Bermuda when the last registration took place; that means that close to 5,000 people currently on the electoral rolls could be either registered in the wrong constituencies, ineligible to vote at all or dead.

Since each of the newly drawn constituencies is meant to contain approximately 1,100 voters, then the net result could be that five entire constituencies' worth of votes might well be invalid (or actually invalidated) come polling day.

An entire herd of cud-chewing Bermudian sacred cows are dully ambling towards the slaughterhouse in the run-up to this General Election: the cast-iron certainty that Bermudian ballots are free and fair; that the Parliamentary registration process is both accurate and reliable; and, perhaps most importantly, that at this election all votes will be of equal value. All of these notions could well be butchered unless urgent remedial action is taken.

ENTIRE platoons of scrutineers at the polling stations on election day would not be enough to prevent the perversion of the democratic process if the existing Parliamentary register is indeed out of whack by 15 per cent or more. The chaos, the unalloyed bedlam, that would result if one out of every six or seven voters was either turned away at the polling stations (assuming they actually know where they are by that time) or cast votes in areas where they no longer live would turn an exercise in direct democracy into a political freak show.

Those voters going into this election still labouring under the delusion that the electoral playing field has been levelled will discover to their horror that not only do all man not have votes of equal value but that some men and women have no votes at all and others, including the dead, have votes that are far more valuable.

Perhaps Bermuda is not crossing the Rubicon in terms of its constitutional development; instead maybe the island is drifting across the Styx. What could ensue at the next General Election might well result in the death of democracy in Bermuda unless there is an urgent course correction.

This is an issue that is at once so commonsensical and so very important it demands the two parties enter into a common, bi-partisan cause to ensure democracy is enhanced - not subverted - on election day.