Thai parties seek fresh polls and recounting of votes
BANGKOK, Apr 5, 2019, The Nation. Political parties yesterday called on the Election Commission (EC) to reveal each polling station’s ballot count and hold new elections or re-count ballots in more than just the eight centres where it claims to have found discrepancies, reported The Nation.
Pheu Thai Party MP candidate for Samut Prakan province, Chatchai na Bangchang, filed a complaint with the EC yesterday, calling on the agency to re-count the ballots as well as investigate the conduct of local election referees.
Several irregularities have been reported, he said, adding that in some stations there was an inconsistency in the numbers even after the ballots were counted twice, while referees in other polling stations refused to let observers in.
Mahachon Party’s Palinee Ngamprink, a transgender MP better known as Pauline, filed a similar petition yesterday, calling on the EC to disclose the election results in detail.
She emphasised that according to unofficial results announced the day after the election, her party had won more than 390,000 votes, but later the EC claimed Mahachon Party had only won some 17,000 votes.
Future Forward Party also yesterday called on the EC to reveal the results of the more than 92,000 polling stations nationwide to ensure transparency.
The party said its members had tried contacting individual polling stations for results, but they were turned away by officials who said the information was confidential.
The EC commissioners had on Wednesday decided that ballots would be recounted in two polling stations, while re-election will be held in six others. Major discrepancies in ballots cast and voter turnout were reported in 10 polling stations, but EC deputy secretary-general Sawang Boonmee said yesterday that the case had already been settled in four of them.
The two polling stations where the ballots will be recounted are in Khon Kaen province. Sawang said the number of ballots counted, the voter turnout and the number of ballots cast did not tally. Such inconsistencies could mean some ballots have either gone missing or have been taken out of the polling stations, a phenomenon that the EC has been referring to as “skippy ballots”.
The six polling stations where a by-election will be held are in Lampang, Yasothon, Phetchabun, Phitsanulok and Bangkok provinces. The EC official explained that a re-election was required because the number of voters and ballots used were inconsistent and officials were unable to identify the cause.
“The MP election law states that the EC can order a re-count or a re-election if there is proof showing the election in that constituency was unfair or the counting was incorrect,” Sawang said.
The candidates in the constituencies requiring a new election will remain the same, he said, adding that they can campaign for votes but the budget will be reduced in line with the law.
In Bangkok, the station that will require a by-election is in Bang Kapi district, where several parties have demanded a re-count or re-election due to massive irregularities.
Future Forward Party, which was also one of the complainants, remained dissatisfied, saying a re-election in one area will not make much difference to the election result of an entire constituency. Irregularities have been reported in many polling stations in the Bang Kapi constituency, the party said. As for the four polling stations that will face no action despite discrepancies, the EC official said this was because the electoral officials were able to explain what had happened.
He said that in most cases, voters had torn up their ballots after marking the wrong box and were not aware that this was unlawful. In one case, he said, a voter had mistakenly put a copy of his ID card on an A4 sheet of paper in the ballot box and taken the ballot home.
The referees found the copy of the voter’s ID card while counting the ballots and were able to track down the voter. They discovered the ballot paper in the voter’s car and charged him with illegally taking the ballot out of the polling station.
Share it
| 
| 
| 
| 
|