Parliamentary Registry staff have seen an upsurge of older people signing up to vote for the first time, leading to probes on whether they are genuine new cases or Bermudians living abroad wanting to cheat the system.

Strict voting laws bar people from voting if they have lived away for more than six months.

Parliamentary Registrar Randy Scott said staff had dealt with more than 100 people of all races in their 50s and beyond wanting to register for the first time in the last year.

He said: "Our antennae go up when we see a first-time application to register from a person in their twilight years. We wonder whether this person has been away for a long time and has decided to come home to vote.

"However, it's hard — it's nice if people are getting excited who have never participated before. We are seeing quite a bit of it. We are hoping it's because they are reconnecting with the process."

Mr. Scott said checks were made to see voters were still resident or just flying in.

"We receive emails from people who want to come home and vote and they have lived abroad for 20 years.

"We try to correct the register as much as we are able to where people no longer live here but they have a Bermudian connection but they are no longer entitled to vote. We have seen things like that up 100 percent. It's hard to prove unless a person just walks and then we would ask them questions.

"Over the past year, there's numerous cases like that. It's nothing unmanageable."

Shadow Attorney General John Barritt said Bermuda's strict laws barring votes from those who had spent a relatively short time away needed to be changed.

British voters can be gone for up to 15 years before they lose the right to vote back home in UK national elections and European Union elections.

Mr. Barritt said the six month limit was far too short and was one of several aspects of electoral law which needs to modernised.

"What about people on work secondment — why should they be deprived of their right to vote because work requires they have to be away for longer than six months a year?"

The United Bermuda Party want to introduce absentee ballots to allow all registered voters to vote if they are off the Island at the time of an election or the day of the advance poll — which is just a week or so before the election.