MFP candidate demands General Election in Sattahip to be void
A Member of Parliament (MP) from the Move Forward Party (MFP), Nitchanan Wangkahart, demanded the Election Commission of Thailand (EC) invalidate the General Election results in the Sattahip district of Chon Buri province after corruption allegations emerged.
On Monday, May 15, a Thai voter, Wiranda Pandee, and others spotted that votes in the 10th constituency of the Sattahip district exceeded the actual number of voters.
According to the constituency EC, 93,252 residents cast their ballots. Among these ballots, 87,961 were deemed valid, 7,229 were considered invalid, and 3,057 were marked no vote. The total ballots were at 98,247 which exceeds the number of voters at 93,252 by nearly 5,000.
Chon Buri Provincial EC Office Director Witchuda Mekhanuwong reported that the ballots were moved from the polling station to the EC office waiting for further investigation. She explained that the exceeded votes occurred due to human error when recording the votes in the system. The EC will decide later whether the ballots would be recounted or not.
Aside from voting confusion, about 10 residents in the district filed a complaint with the police yesterday, May 16, that they voted for candidate number 8 from the Bhumjaithai Party, Suree Kaewkanha, but were surprised to see that the candidate received no votes according to the unofficial results.
One of the complainants, 43 year old Salikakorn Dill, told KhaoSod that she did not see the candidate getting any votes. On election day, she visited Sattahip District Office after hearing rumours that the ballot counting would take place there. However, it turned out that the counting was conducted at the polling station itself.
Yesterday, the MFP’s Party-list Proportional Representation of MFP, Benja Saengchan, together with MFP’s MP candidate of the Sattahip district, Nitchanan Wangkahart, submitted the formal request to the EC to nullify the General Election results in the area and conduct a fresh election.
Nitchanan explained that her suspicions were raised when the ballot counting report for Sattahip on the EC Report website experienced a noticeable delay compared to other polling stations. Furthermore, the number of votes recorded exceeded the actual number of eligible voters.
Nitchanan added that the EC team of the 10th constituency calculated the total scores of each candidate within their office, without any witnesses present.
Nitchanan stated that she did not wish to pursue a ballot recount since it would be impossible to determine if the surplus ballots were genuinely cast by eligible voters. Instead, she advocated for the EC to organise a fresh election. She said she would prefer to lose the election if it meant it was more transparent.
The EC attributed the issue to a human error during the vote recording process and has not provided any further updates on the matter.
ORIGINAL STORY: Thai voters accuse Election Commission of corruption and electoral interference
The Election Commission of Thailand (EC) has been accused of corruption and interfering in the electoral process by voters in the Sattahip district of Chon Buri. Thai voters in the Sattahip district of Chon Buri filed complaints against the EC after the number of votes exceeded the actual number of voters by nearly 5,000.
The EC is responsible for overseeing the 10th constituency of the Sattahip district. It announced that out of 131,994 registered voters, 93,252 individuals cast their ballots. According to the EC, 87,961 were valid ballots, 7,229 were invalid ballots, and 3,057 were classified as ‘vote no’ ballots. But it appears the EC is crap at maths as there is a discrepancy in the numbers as 98,247 votes were cast which exceeded the number of residents, 93,252.
A resident of the Sattahip district, Wiranda Pandee, attempted to take a picture and record a video of the discrepancy as evidence, but an EC employee grabbed her phone, causing Wiranda to fall and injure her wrist. Wiranda was immediately taken to hospital for treatment.
The situation became more tense when a group of residents and authorities almost clashed over the vote discrepancy, but the police intervened to prevent any further escalation.
In an interview with KhaoSod, Wiranda explained that many people protested against the inaccurate election results in the Sattahip constituency. Fearing that the authorities were attempting to cover up their mistake by deleting crucial information, she decided to record the incident as solid evidence.
Wiranda has filed a complaint at the Sattahip Police Station and shared the videos and pictures of the incident with several media outlets to expose the EC’s wrongdoing to the public.
The Director of the Chon Buri Provincial Election Commission Office, Witchuda Mekhanuwong, reported that the officers from the municipality and Sattahip Police Station moved the ballots to the office, located 50 metres away from the polling station for safety. Witchuda added that the actual number of invalid ballots was 2,200, not 7,229, and that the score of each candidate was the same. The EC said they will decide later whether all the ballots would be recounted or not.
An unofficial report published on the EC website stated that Sathira Phuakprapan from the Palang Pracharath Party emerged victorious in the 10th constituency of the Sattahip district, with 27,461 votes. The second runner-up was a candidate from the Pheu Thai Party, and the third runner-up was a candidate from the Move Forward Party (MFP).
In the other Chon Buri constituencies, MFP unofficially won seven constituencies, Pheu Thai won one constituency, and Ruam Thai Sang Chart won one constituency.
