Advance voting suffers minor hiccups
A few glitches occurred during Sunday’s advance voting in the general election in Bangkok but Election Commission (EC) officials were able to resolve the problems before polling stations closed at 5pm, said Samran Tanpanich, director of the EC’s Political and Electoral Development Institute.
Problems reported included the link from the QR code failing to respond due to the high volume of users and crowding that resulted in long queues in searing heat, all of which the EC will try to improve during voting next Sunday (May 14).
Samran added that the Siam Paragon polling station, which had more than 40,000 people registered for advanced voting, experienced some crowding at the escalators leading to the station. The EC has coordinated with the mall operator to redirect traffic flow to reduce crowding on May 14, he said.
The station also reported that the last voter arrived just 30 seconds before the deadline and three individuals showed up several minutes after the station had closed.
On social media, the public’s dissatisfaction with the EC’s performance increased in several areas across the country as problems during advance voting were reported.
Election officials in Nonthaburi, for example, put postal instead of electoral provincial codes on the first 100 envelopes of ballots cast by early voters in the province. Fortunately, the issue was detected early, and the EC promised the envelopes would be mailed to the correct constituencies.
The hashtag #กกตมีไว้ทําไม (Why do we need EC) was trending No 1 on Thai Twitter on Sunday, with over 526,000 tweets.
Meanwhile, the campaign urging the replacement of the current make-up of the EC at Change.org has now collected over 1 million signatures from supporters after more than two years of inactivity.
The campaign started in March 2019 but halted in April 2020 with only 849,079 signatures, thus failing to reach the target of 1.5 million signatures. The campaign sought to oust the fifth and current commissioners, who were appointed by the National Council for Peace and Order in 2018, while the constitution stipulates that election commissioners must come from the Senate’s suggestions.
