The Parliamentary Election Amendment Act 2012 allows the Parliamentary Registrar to conduct research to determine whether someone is registered in the right district and transfer those who aren’t, after giving notice.The Parliamentary Registrar is also empowered to appoint a single nomination place for all constituencies in a general election.And the law allows election candidates, election officers and police officers to vote at an advance poll which can now be held over a period of a few days.Opposition MPs supported the measures but argued that they did not go far enough in enhancing Bermuda’s democracy.And they accused the Government of taking too long to make the necessary improvements in the system to prevent inaccurate voter registration and implement a postal vote.Premier Paula Cox said the bill’s purpose was “to streamline and make the process of voter participation in the Bermuda franchise simpler and more inclusive”.She noted that in the past the electoral system had been manipulated “not for the benefit of all, but as a means to create and maintain political and economic power”.But, the Premier said, “a person’s right to vote is far too important to leave to happenstance and it is far too important to be left to the manipulation of a privileged few”.“History will reveal the significant change made in 1998 when this Government was elected to power for the first time. We immediately embarked a series of focused and deliberate steps, calculated to make access to the universal franchise fairer for all Bermudians.”Among the Progressive Labour Party’s improvements to the system was to eliminate the requirement to register to vote every year and to introduce single-seat constituencies, she said.“To limit a voter’s ability to exercise his civic responsibility simply because he did not register in a given year did not support inclusivity, democracy or good governance.“In fact, Mr Speaker, our Constitution, the blueprint for our own democratic process, clearly states that the only persons to be limited from the exercise of their rights to vote are the incarcerated, those not of sound mind and those who have passed from this life into the next.”The PLP had ensured that the Constitution was amended “to ensure that the electoral boundaries which had been unfairly drawn since the creation of constituencies in Bermuda, more accurately and equitably reflected Bermuda’s voting population”, she added.“To further remedy perceptions about imbalances in voter distribution, a Boundaries Commission, independent of the direction or control of any other person or authority, was established to ensure that to the extent possible, each constituency was equal in size in terms of its electoral role.”Ms Cox said that the new legislation “moves Bermuda to the next level”.The Bill seeks to amend the Parliamentary Election Act 1978, and Parliamentary Election Rules 1979, for the express purpose of refining the electoral process in order to ensure that the details recorded for each voter are accurate and to ensure ease of access for each voter.Fixed-term elections cannot be implemented without “first making substantial amendments to the Constitution — so that one is settled”, she said.She said that a bill introducing postal voting was brought to the House in 2005, but while the question of absentee voting by post or the internet “may be revisited in the future”, concerns remain about fraud.And she said that Bermuda was too small to move to a system of proportional representation.“It is really unnecessary for elections in the Bermudian context,” she said.One Bermuda Alliance MP Shawn Crockwell said his party supports the measures but doesn’t believe they go far enough.He noted that, contrary to the Constitution, people had been able to vote in constituencies they did not reside in.“That opens the door for individuals to engage in voter fraud,” he said.“We hope the amendments today will go some way to alleviate that.”He said a 2005 committee that reviewed the electoral system had recommended postal voting “as a first step” in the reform process.“It is regrettable that today we are not taking that first step some ten years later.”He questioned why the Parliamentary Registrar was being given discretionary power to decide the number of days of advance polling and said his party would prefer a fixed seven-day period.Mr Crockwell said that his party believed that about five percent of voters were not properly registered to vote.Kim Swan, elected under the United Bermuda Party, said data on the proportion of voters incorrectly registered was developed by the UBP but is now in the hands of the OBA.“Now we confirm that the OBA now has the UBP’s data that I can no longer refer to,” he said, provoking laughter from the Government benches.Mr Swan said that he had made his position on electoral reform clear to Henry Bellingham, the UK Minister in charge of the colonies, in a submission last year.Fixed-term elections, absentee balloting and an electoral commission had been long-standing positions of the UBP and all featured in his submission, he said.He argued in favour of proportional representation saying that while 48 percent of the voters favoured the Opposition party in the 2003 election, they only ended up with 14 seats. And, although 52 percent voted for the Government party, it ended up with 62 percent of the seats.“When we talk about democracy, when we talk about fairness, we have to be really truthful about that and show where that type of disparity hurts not us parliamentarians, but the voters.”He said that even under the dual seat system, elections delivered seats to each party which were more consistent with the number of votes received.Under the current system, he said, only a handful of constituencies are marginal while about 26 “are foregone conclusions” and insisted that the House should consider proportional representation.