Election 2020 fraud trial – Court receives all regional recount statements, Region 4 General Election records

The trial in the 2020 elections fraud case resumed on Tuesday with the continuation of testimony from the Registrar of the Supreme Court, Sueann Lovell, during which all of the Statements of Recount (SoRs) for the Regional Elections were lodged, while the SoRs for the General Elections were completed up to Region Four.
Lovell was the only witness for the day when the case continued before acting Chief Magistrate Faith McGusty at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court. Lovell had first started giving testimony in May before the trial was adjourned. During her first appearances, Lovell would have verified and lodged all of the original Statements of Poll (SoPs) for the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections.
There were a total of 2339 polling stations, resulting in 2339 SoPs and 2339 SoRs for the General and Regional Elections, respectively.

The SoPs and SoRs are a crucial part of the trial, where nine persons currently stand accused of attempting to rig the results of the elections.
Those charged include former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield; Deputy CEO Roxanne Myers; former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo; former A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Minister Volda Lawrence; former APNU+AFC Chief Scrutineer Carol Smith-Joseph; and former Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) employees Enrique Livan, Sheffern February, Michelle Miller, and Denise Bobb-Cummings.
Lovell has been the gatekeeper of the original SoPs and SoRs since January 2021, when the High Court ordered the GECOM to transfer all original SoPs and SoRs from the 2020 elections to the custody of the High Court for safekeeping and as official evidence. The documents were delivered to the High Court by former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, in the presence of GECOM Chairperson Claudette Singh.
Lowenfield is one of the defendants currently charged in the case.
The documents were ordered to be handed over given that the Representation of the Peoples Act (ROPA) allows the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) to destroy all elections documents after a 12-month period has elapsed.
During her last appearance, Lovell testified to the strict chain of custody that the documents were under. Subsequent to the court’s possession of the documents in May 2021, copies of the original SoPs and SoRs were made and handed over to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Guyana Police Force (GPF) as evidence in the election’s fraud case.
During the handing over of the copies to the police, an audit process was conducted to ensure that the copies handed over were an exact match to the original documents held by the registrar.
The trial continues today.