Ghim Moh lady couldn't vote on Polling Day after someone allegedly used her NRIC to vote

Oh no.

Joshua Lee | July 15, 2020, 01:20 PM

[UPDATED on Wednesday, July 15 at 3:30pm: ELD has responded at 1:55 pm with a media statement regarding the matter. We've appended their response at the bottom of this article.]

A woman has lodged a police report after she was unable to cast her vote on Polling Day, reported 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.

However, when she tried to scan her NRIC to register herself, the system allegedly indicated that she had already been registered.

A staff at the polling station tried to key in Lum's NRIC number manually but the system still showed that Lum had already registered, raising the possibility that someone used her NRIC to vote.

However, Lum insisted to LHWB that she did not cast her vote earlier in the day and she had never lost her NRIC.

Instead, Lum suspected that the system malfunctioned.

Staff at the polling centre then issued her a blue tendered ballot paper.

Tendered ballot papers are issued to voters who apply to cast their votes even though, according to the register, he or she had already voted.

According to LHWB, a staff told Lum that her vote would not be counted but her ballot paper will be used in an investigation.

Upon returning home, Lum called the Elections Department (ELD) who told her that incidents like this had happened before. The ELD advised Lum to lodge a police report, which she did.

Lum returned to the polling station at 2pm hoping that the issued had been resolved and she could finally cast her vote. However, it was not.

She then called ELD at 5pm to get an update. The ELD told her that investigations were still on ongoing and so she could not vote.

Lum also told LHWB that that while she had voted in the last three elections, this was the first time she encountered a problem like this.

ELD has since responded to the case, saying that Lum's NRIC was not used to register to vote during polling day.

The issue was due to "human error and miscommunication between the two election officials handling her registration".

Top image © Lim Wei Xiang for Mothership. H/T to Lianhe Wanbao.