Maruah has submitted the following feedback to Elections Department of Singapore (“ELD”) in view of the General Election due by next year, and ELD’s announcement that it had made some changes to electoral procedures as a result of experience gained in the 2023 Presidential Election:
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To: Elections Department, Prime Minister’s Office
Maruah is gratified that you are responding to public feedback and providing more space on ballot papers for voters to indicate their choice. During last year’s Presidential Election, ELD also introduced two new methods of voting – postal ballots and special polling stations at nursing homes. More voters were able to have their voices heard thanks to these new procedures, but there is room for improvement in these procedures.
In the case of postal balloting, over 40% of postal ballots received were rejected, mostly due to illegible or missing postmarks, or late delivery. These were not the fault of the voters, and I urge ELD to adopt more reliable ways of validating the dates of dispatch instead of relying solely on the vagaries of foreign postal systems. The forms and instructions for voting should also be improved to reduce the chance of inadvertent errors such as voters signing their forms at the wrong place or posting multiple ballots in the same envelope.
In the case of nursing homes, residents were pre-selected for participation based on the homes’ assessments of their ability to vote. Unfortunately, from my own observations as a polling agent, a large proportion of the selected residents did not appear to have the mental capacity to vote or to clearly indicate their choice. This was alluded to by Minister Chan Chun Sing in a written reply to a Parliamentary Question on 4 October 2023, where he said “election officials did face challenges including managing voters who may lack the mental capacity to vote”. To prevent any disputes in future over the validity of votes at nursing homes, ELD should tighten and standardise the criteria used to assess the mental capacity of residents before they vote. ELD should also evaluate the usefulness of mobile polling stations at nursing homes.
Maruah would like to thank ELD, and the thousands of elections officials and public servants involved in elections, for their continual efforts to improve the voting experience and making it easier for Singaporeans to exercise their right and duty of voting.
MARUAH Singapore
June 2024
MARUAH Singapore 