EC clears mystery of 5 million extra ballots, sheds no light on control measures
The Election Commission (EC) issued an explanation on Friday as to why it printed nearly 5 million extra ballots for the upcoming general election on May 14.
The issue of extra ballots was raised by Pheu Thai Party last week, which asked the election watchdog if it had a system in place to ensure all extra ballot papers will be returned if not used.
“There are a total of 52,239,354 eligible voters for the May 14 general election, so the EC has printed 57.2 million sets or 4,960,646 extra ballot papers,” EC secretary-general Sawang Boonmee said in a Facebook post.
The ballot papers will come in a booklet of 20 ballots each, so a total of 2.86 million books have been printed, he added.
Sawang said the ballot books will be submitted to polling stations both in Thailand and overseas, adding that each station will receive one extra book as a spare.
Hence, since there are about 100,000 polling stations across the country, some 2 million extra ballots will be required as spares, he said.
Sawang added that officials stationed at the polling stations can register to cast their votes at the station they are manning. Each polling station will have nine to 12 officials plus at least two security guards. The EC is, therefore, reserving 2 million ballots for these officials at polling stations nationwide and overseas.
The remaining 960,000 extra ballots will be divided into two portions, with the first portion reserved as spares for the advance election on Saturday (May 7).
The second portion will be kept for people returning from areas where a polling station could not be set up due to emergency situations, such as Sudan, which has an ongoing armed conflict, he said.
However, Sawang did not say if the EC had any system in place to ensure all unused ballots are returned to the commission.
