Students and others who are overseas during the next general election will be disenfranchised by not being able to vote, Senators argued yesterday.The issue came up during a debate on the Parliamentary Election Amendment Act 2012, which will allow the Parliamentary Registrar to determine if voters are registered in the right district and transfer those who aren’t and allow election candidates, election officers and police officers to vote at advance polls.The bill was passed in the Upper Chamber but not before complaints from Opposition and independent Senators that the legislation failed to assist students and other Bermudians not here on voting day.Independent Senators Joan Dillas-Wright and James Jardine both expressed disappointment, with the latter saying: “I do think something should be done to provide for their ability to vote when they are not here.”He said he’d spoken to students who were “very keen to cast their vote and ... very concerned that they will be disenfranchised just because they are not here”.Government Senator Diallo Rabain said he was a proponent of absentee voting “in some way, shape or form”.But he added: “I don’t think we have done the necessary homework to enact [it] at this point. I’m taking comfort in the fact that we are making sure that the people in Bermuda are enfranchised. These amendments go a long way to addressing that.”One Bermuda Alliance Senator Toni Daniels said Government had been looking at the issue of absentee voting since 2005. “I’m really not understanding why, in all these years, it hasn’t been more fully explored and enacted.”Opposition Senate leader Michael Dunkley said Government hadn’t moved swiftly enough to address the issue of absentee and postal voting.“We see today that the Government has said that they haven’t decided to move on it because of some challenges they see because of voter fraud and some things like that. I certainly consider that to be a somewhat weak excuse.”Government Senator David Burt said: “If we can’t ensure that the person who is casting the ballot is the person who is supposed to be casting the ballot, then that’s a recipe for disaster.“There will come a time, I believe, in the very near future where it’s not overly onerous [to ensure that].”Government Senate Leader Kim Wilson, who presented the bill, said electoral fraud was an issue and she wouldn’t support absentee voting without absolute certainty about who was voting.“If we are unable to minimise the effect of fraud then the person that has presented themselves to vote in person, then their vote is effectively diluted.”The OBA said if elected it would pass legislation to introduce fixed-term elections, as has recently happened in the UK.Sen Michael Fahy said it could be done without changing the Constitution, but Attorney General Sen Wilson insisted that wasn’t the case.Useful website: www.elections.gov.bm.