Youths make up 72 per cent of new additions to voters' list

The Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) says youths make up 72 per cent of the persons who have been added to the voter’s list.

The ECJ published the November 30 voters’ list with a total of 34,907 new names added to it.

The Commission says of that number, there are 24,964 new voters between the ages of 18 and 24.

It notes that this represents 72 per cent of the total number of newly registered electors.

The ECJ says youths between the ages of 18 and 19 years make up the vast majority of that number, totalling 18,589 of the more than 24,000 new voters.

It says the data shows that persons between 25 and 64 years of age amounted to 8,896, while 1,047 persons over 65 years were added to the list.

Meanwhile, the ECJ says St Catherine Southern and Westmoreland Central recorded the highest number of new additions across all age ranges.

It says St Catherine Southern added 965 new voters and Westmoreland Central added 864 new voters.

The full voters' list now stands at 1,824,410, representing a net increase of 31,371 over the 1,793,039 names on the previous list published in May of this year.