September 10, 2020, 02:17 PM
One of the main grouses from Election Day was the long queues formed at polling stations.
One man, in particular, wrote to the Straits Times forum complaining that his 89-year-old mother took about an hour to cast her vote at Jing Shan Primary School after reaching the polling station at about 9:30am.
In contrast, she took only 10 minutes to vote in GE2015.
It prompted an apology from the head of the Elections Department (ELD), who promised to conduct a thorough review post-General Election.
The review has been conducted and the findings were released by ELD today (September 10).
We summarised them for you below:
- Safe management measures (e.g. one-metre distancing, temperature taking) took up additional time and lengthened queues.
- 25 polling stations had very large turnouts of more than 4,400. For context, the average number of voters per polling station was about 2,400. These 25 polling stations should have been better resourced with more Election Officials or e-Registration devices.
- Many voters did not keep to their allocated time band. Morning slots were meant for senior citizens but one-third of morning voters were non-senior.
- The time bands also meant that polling stations with a high proportion of younger voters had a smaller window (about seven hours) to vote, which led to queues in the afternoon.
- Voters were unfamiliar with the process of self-scanning their NRICs, which took up more time during registration.
The ELD also commissioned a post-election survey which found that 70 per cent of voters were satisfied with their voting experience.
However, those who voted at schools and community centres/clubs (i.e. polling stations with more voters) registered a poorer voting experience because of the length of time it took to vote.
The survey also found that once voting time starts to reach 30 minutes, voter satisfaction starts to decrease significantly with increasing time taken to vote.
ELD said that it will implement these improvements for future elections:
- Increase the pool of reserve manpower and equipment. ELD will increase the reserve pool of officers, who can be deployed quickly to polling stations to augment the onsite team to handle contingencies, including any unforeseen build-ups in queues.
- Reduce the number of voters at large polling stations. Wherever feasible, ELD will split large polling stations.
- Review the need for time-bands. If there's a need, fewer voters will be allocated in the morning, to provide a comfortable buffer for other voters who vote outside their time-band, as the morning window is generally preferred by voters.
ELD will also see how best to spread out senior and non-senior voters across time bands, as well as the set up of polling stations to make them senior-friendly. ELD also assured the public that it will improve its systems and processes for future elections.
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Top photo © Lim Sin Thai for Mothership.
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