Over 300,000 advance voting ballots are at risk of being problematic and not included in the vote count on Sunday, said Thailand Post, the state enterprise providing postal services in the country adding the envelopes containing these ballots are “unreadable” due to poor handwriting.
The issue of the unreadable ballots was brought to light at first by a journalist at the Thai PBS station, Phatthraporn Tan-ngam. Tan-ngam shared a video clip of her interview with the deputy managing director of Thailand Post Pongsatorn Wisetsuwan.
Acknowledging that the handwriting on some 300,000 envelopes containing cast ballots from advance voting is “unreadable”, Pongsatorn during the interview said the issue must be investigated by the country’s election body so that it can be ascertained whether the ballots can be included in the vote count or not.
“These envelopes may be incomplete … missing the province, district or election code. Sorting officials aren’t sure where to send them. It doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t readable,” Pongsatorn said.
What is unreadable on the envelopes?
The envelopes consist of details of provinces, districts and constituencies. Along with it, it also comprises of five-digit election codes used for sorting and delivery of the ballots.
Who writes the details on the envelopes?
The details are written by the election officials at the voting stations during the early voting. The unreadability of the details on the envelopes is attributed to human error by committee members, as per Thailand Post. However, it is pertinent to note that this has nothing to do with Thailand Post as this process comes under the ambit of the Election Commission of Thailand (ECT).
After the sorting process is done, the ballots are sent to about 400 districts. But the illegible handwriting made the sorting process challenging. Thailand Post had 1,000 of its staff members working round the clock to accelerate the sorting process.
Meanwhile, Picharn Chaopattanawong, deputy leader of the Move Forward Party, on Friday condemned the Election Commission for not clarifying on the issue of these problematic votes. He urged the election body to take action to resolve the issue.
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“The EC always says the problems can be fixed, but it should ask Thailand Post if they can sort these envelopes. The EC must address this issue now,” he said.
Picharn pointed out that EC must take accountability of the issue if the votes are not counted for. A total of 2,235,830 voters were registered to cast advance votes.
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