EC chief assures that misaddressed votes from Nonthaburi would not be wasted
The chief of the Election Commission (EC) on Monday allayed fears that around 100 votes from the advance voting in Nonthaburi province would be wasted, as their envelops had been dispatched with the wrong provincial and constituency codes.
EC Office secretary-general Sawang Boonmee said that the advance voting has a self-check system that would prevent any vote from being lost.
He explained that each envelop, carrying two ballots of each voter who had cast the votes in advance on Sunday, still carries the five digits from the log book of all voters registered at each advance voting station.
As a result, in case of a ballot count discrepancy in any constituency, the EC could recheck the envelops sent to the constituency in question by using the five digits on the envelops to crosscheck with the voters’ logbooks.
On Sunday, the EC detected that the first 100 envelops at the Nonthaburi advance voting station were marked wrongly. Election officials at the station used postal codes on the envelops instead of the EC’s provincial and destination codes.
After detecting the errors, Sawang said on Sunday that the 100 envelops were isolated for fixing later.
Sawang further explained on Monday that at each constituency, there was a self-check system to check the number of votes cast and the number of counted votes.
If the number of counted votes was higher, it would mean that some envelops from advance voting were mailed wrongly there and the EC would sort out the discrepancy.
He assured the public that such errors would not happen on election day on May 14.
