GECOM urges voters to uplift ID cards ahead of September 1 elections

… says ID card crucial for faster, smoother voting process
With the General and Regional Elections set for September 1, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is urging all eligible voters who have not yet collected their National Identification Cards (ID Cards) to do so immediately.
GECOM emphasised that the National ID Card is the primary and preferred form of identification for voters on Election Day. Its use significantly reduces wait times at polling stations and allows for quicker processing of electors.
“The presentation of your National ID card helps confirm your identity more efficiently and keeps the voting process smooth and timely for everyone,” the Commission stated in a public notice.
As such, GECOM is calling on all individuals who have conducted any of the registration-related transactions to collect their cards, including new registration, change of name and correction to personal particulars.
The Commission confirmed it is holding ID cards from previous registration cycles, including the most recent Claims and Objections exercise conducted in June 2025.
ID cards must be collected in person from the Registration Office where the original transaction was done from Monday to Thursday from 08:00hrs to 16:30hrs and Friday from 08:00hrs to 13:30hrs.
GECOM has approved six parties to contest the upcoming GRE: the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), led by Presidential Candidate Irfaan Ali; A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), led by Aubrey Norton; the Alliance for Change (AFC), led by Presidential Candidate Attorney Nigel Hughes; the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM), with Presidential Candidate Amanza Walton-Desir; We Invest in Nationhood (WIN), led by US-sanctioned Azruddin Mohamed; and the Assembly of Liberty and Prosperity (ALP), created by former APNU Minister Simona Broomes.
GECOM Public Relations Officer, Yolanda Warde, on Tuesday confirmed that GECOM had received no joinder list submissions by the deadline.
Under Guyana’s proportional representation (PR) electoral system, a joinder list is when two or more parties agree in advance of the election to pool their votes together for the purpose of seat allocation after the election. The parties remain independent during the campaign, and voters vote for each party separately, but when seats in the National Assembly are calculated, their votes are combined as one.
GECOM earlier this month clarified that under the legal procedures governing the Joinder of Lists and the Filling of Vacancies in the National Assembly, if only one seat is won by the combination, then that seat is awarded to the party with the highest number of valid votes (Single Seat Scenario).
However, addressing the procedures for filling parliamentary vacancies, GECOM cited Section 99A of ROPA, stating that if a seat becomes vacant outside of a general dissolution of Parliament, the replacement must be someone who is not currently an elected Member of Parliament, be qualified and willing to serve, and be selected from the same list from which the original MP was elected.
As such, only members from the same party can continue to successively occupy the parliamentary seat if it becomes vacant.