The Elections Department (ELD) has responded to the case of a woman who lodged a police report after she was unable to cast her vote on Polling Day.
According to a report by Lianhe Wanbao, Mdm Lum, a 36-year-old constituent of Holland-Bukit Timah GRC went to her designated polling station at 23A Ghim Moh Link on July 10 at around 12.30pm.
The system allegedly indicated that she had already been registered when she scanned her NRIC to register herself, even though she did not cast her vote earlier that day.
As the system still showed that Lum had been registered even when staff at the polling station tried to key her NRIC number manually, it raised the possibility that someone used Lum's NRIC to vote.
She was then advised by ELD to lodge a police report.
ELD: Voter's NRIC not used by someone else
In a media statement given to Mothership, ELD said that Lum's NRIC has not been used to register to vote on Polling day.
The Presiding Officer (PO) had tried to register Lum's NRIC using the e-Registration system multiple times, but the system did not register her NRIC successfully as the PO had not switched out of the wrong module of the e-Registration system which was used to serve the previous voter.
Said PO escalated the problem to the Assistant Returning Officer (ARO), though a miscommunication between them led the ARO to interpret that Lum's NRIC number had already been registered for voting earlier that day.
This was wrongly communicated to Lum.
ELD has since reached out to Lum to apologise and inform her that her NRIC had not been used by someone to vote.
They will also restore Mdm Lum to the Registers of Electors without penalty.
You can read ELD's full statement here:
ELD has completed its investigation on Mdm Lum’s case. The system logs showed that Mdm Lum’s NRIC was not used to register to vote on Polling Day. The mistake was due to human error and miscommunication between the two election officials handling her registration on Polling Day.
The system logs showed that the Presiding Officer (PO) had tried to register Mdm Lum’s NRIC using the e-Registration system multiple times. However, the system did not register Mdm Lum’s NRIC successfully because the PO had not switched out of the wrong module of the e-Registration system, which he had used to serve the previous voter.
The PO then escalated this to the Assistant Returning Officer (ARO). However, a miscommunication between the PO and ARO led the latter to interpret that Mdm Lum’s NRIC number had already been used to register for voting earlier in the day. This was then wrongly communicated to Mdm Lum.
ELD has since reached out to Mdm Lum to let her know that her NRIC was not used to register to vote and to apologise to her. She is relieved that the matter had been clarified, and that importantly the system logs showed that no one had used her NRIC to register to vote.
ELD will restore Mdm Lum to the Registers of Electors without penalty.
Top image via Kane Raynard Goh