Over 300,000 advance voting ballots unreadable due to handwriting issues in Thai election

Pattharaporn Tan-ngam, a journalist for Thai PBS, posted a shocking video clip on her personal Facebook account, which featured an interview with Pongsatorn Wisetsuwan, the Deputy Managing Director of Thailand Post Co. Ltd. In the video, Pongsatorn revealed that over 300,000 already-cast ballots from the advance voting conducted on April 7 were unreadable due to poor handwriting on the envelopes. The envelopes had to be hand-written by the presiding committee at the polling stations, specifying the district and the five-digit election code.

According to the post shared by Pattharaporn, over 300,000 envelopes containing the advance voting ballots had unreadable handwriting. The post explained that this was a human error as the committee members at the polling stations were required to write the details of the province, district, and the five-digit election code. The unclear handwriting led to issues during the sorting process.

Thailand Post is not held responsible for reading or analyzing the problematic ballot envelopes, as this task falls under the jurisdiction of the Election Commission of Thailand (ECT). However, Thailand Post is responsible for quickly transporting and sorting over two million ballot envelopes that were used for advance voting, delivering them to over 400 districts nationwide. The sorting process must be completed by today reports Sanook.

One reason for the delay in transporting and sorting the advance voting ballots was the time-consuming process that began right after the closing of the advance voting polls on April 7. Thailand Post has since employed over 1,000 staff members to work 24 hours a day to expedite the sorting process as quickly as possible.

This situation cannot be attributed to Thailand Post; the issues arise from the use of handwriting on envelopes and the need for accurate and precise sorting based on three factors: 1) province, 2) district, and 3) five-digit election code. If any of these three elements are not aligned or illegible, the ballots become problematic and must be sent to the ECT for further examination, according to the regulations established by the ECT themselves.