How to Vote and Who to Vote for in Jamaica's General Election 2016

Jamaica is now in General Election mode come Thursday February 25th 2016 as noted in the article “VIDEO: Election Day Is February 25”, published January 31 2016 The Jamaica Gleaner.

And as you may have heard, there are no debates being planned between the PNP (People's National Party) and the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) as reported in the article “PNP still says no to debate”, published February 17^th 2016 Go-Jamaica, making this one of the strangest General Elections on record.

#JaVotes2016 How To Vote https://t.co/kzA2ADQ3hs pic.twitter.com/xWVCkEO4n3

— diGJamaica (@diGJamaica) February 19, 2016

So how will the younger Voters know who to vote for and how to vote?

General Election 2016 - How to Vote and who to Vote for

First, for all of my younger readers, here’s a hand primer on how to vote in a General Election in Jamaica.

The General Election has some interesting Stats worth taking note of the complete list of candidates for General Election 2016:

1.      152 nominated candidates 

2.      63 candidates fielded by the JLP

3.      63 candidates fielded by the PNP

4.      8 Candidates fielded by the NDM (National Democratic Movement)  

5.      6 Candidates fielded by MGPPP (Marcus Garvey People’s Political Party)

6.      2 Candidates fielded by PPP (People’s Progressive Party)

7.      1 Candidate fielded by HOPE (Hope for Portland Eastern)

Still, the JLP and the PNP, who are the major political parties in Jamaica, have been tech-savvy enough, at one point even engaging in pranking each other by rerouting traffic from each other websites as noted in my blog article entitled “JLP and PNP Domain Name Routing as General Election approaches – How Apps and Crowdfunding will win over smartphone Voters”. 

However, it's in the release of their respective party Manifesto that they have shown some more tech savvy, opting to release them to the general public via the use of shortened customized URL codes from bitly.com as shown below:

Manifesto links here: PNP https://t.co/5nazH68Ukp ... JLP https://t.co/4Y7xi1k3t8 #JaVotes2016 pic.twitter.com/KOudyC7YRm

— Jamaica Gleaner (@JamaicaGleaner) February 19, 2016

Now had they advertised on social Media and combined the use of shortened customized URL codes with a Crowdfunding Campaign via Social Media as described in my MICO Wars blog article entitled “How Jamaicans can use Crowdfunding for their Projects in 30 Days”, they could have raised enough capital to fund their respective campaigns.

That folks, would have made the General Elections a lot more interesting to the younger Generation and thus more of them would be voting. The lack of any Debates means that these manifestos will be heavily scrutinized.

Here's the link:

The Complete List Of Candidates Up For Election On February 25 (with Excel File Download)