The number of registered voters has risen by almost six per cent in the past six years, with 2,388 more people on the electoral roll now than in June 2010.

Parliamentary registrar Tenia Woolridge told The Royal Gazette there were 41,355 Bermudians registered to vote in June 2010 and 43,743 as of April 15 this year.

Ms Woolridge said she expected there to be another 500 added to the list before this summer’s referendum on same-sex marriage and civil unions, as she was working on approving a backlog of pending forms from the last by-election.

She said she attributed the rise to factors including “an increase in awareness, new status Bermudians getting on the register and also the fact that we have field registration officers that go door-to-door in the constituencies, collecting and verifying the data”.

“Many of those people may not have registered if we had not gone to them,” said Ms Woolridge. “The influx of forms has come through the field registration officers.”

The figures shared by Ms Woolridge reveal there were: 41,464 voters as of June 2011; 42,542 as of November 2012; 43,474 as of June 2013; 43,277 as of June 2014; and 43,745 as of June 2015.

The new Boundaries Commission, which has begun meeting to scrutinise the electoral boundaries map, will take into account the number of registered voters, as well as another 6,000 Bermudians identified as being aged 18 or over and believed to be living here but who have not registered to vote. According to Bermuda’s constitution, a commission must be appointed periodically to produce a report aimed at ensuring the 36 constituencies contain roughly equal numbers of voters.

The last report tabled in 2010 saw a redrawing of the electoral map to take account of a boom in population in several areas. The changes altered several boundaries and affected 14 per cent of the voting population, or 6,594 voters.

The new commission’s report should be tabled in the House of Assembly by the end of 2017 but chairman Francis Alexis, a QC from Grenada, told this newspaper it was hoped to have it completed well before then, ideally in the last quarter of this year.

He said it was “too early to say” whether the commission would recommend any boundary changes.

David Jenkins, the chief justice of Prince Edward Island in Canada, sits as the judicial member on the bipartisan Boundaries Commission. Government MPs Sylvan Richards and Mark Pettingill and Opposition MPs Michael Scott and Jamahl Simmons represent the two political parties.