During the parliamentary sitting on Sep. 18, 2023, minister Chan Chun Sing, on behalf of the Prime Minister, addressed questions from Members of Parliament (MPs) on the issue of 4,803 households, or 9,822 voters, in the Tanjong Pagar Group Representation Constituency (GRC) receiving two poll cards during the 2023 Presidential Election in August.

He said that this resulted from "human error" by printing company Toppan, who had mailed test prints of the poll cards along with the actual poll cards.

The duplicate poll cards, however, showed the correct polling stations for the voters, and affected voters were able to vote accordingly.

"Processes are also in place to ensure that the voters with two poll cards can only vote once as all voters must produce their NRIC or valid passport as proof of identification, which is verified against the polling station registers," Chan said.

He added that even though the duplicate poll cards have different serial numbers, serial numbers on a poll card "does not determine whether a person can vote or not".

New measures

Chan also said that the Elections Department (ELD) will be putting in place measures to prevent such errors from taking place in the future.

First, the ELD will require the printer company to "tighten its internal quality assurance processes" to prevent test prints from being mailed out.

The ELD and printer company will also work together to conduct joint checks to ensure the test prints are destroyed and perform a sampling audit to check the accuracy of the information in the poll cards.

"This includes ensuring that the number of poll cards printed for a constituency is exactly the same as the number of registered voters in the constituency," Chan said.

All affected voters were able to vote

In response to MP of Tanjong Pagar GRC Joan Pereira's question on whether any voters were unable to vote due to the issue, Chan replied:

"No, we don't believe that anybody was not able to vote because they received a duplicate poll card."

Top photos from MCI/Youtube and ELD.