Lessons from Incident where 10,000 Voters in Tanjong Pagar Received Two Poll Cards

61 Ms Joan Pereira asked the Prime Minister with regard to the incident where almost 10,000 voters in Tanjong Pagar GRC received two poll cards (a) what lessons have been learnt; and (b) what measures will be implemented to prevent future errors.

The Minister for Education (Mr Chan Chun Sing) (for the Prime Minister): Mr Speaker, Sir, on behalf of the Prime Minister, please.

During the recent Presidential Election, the Elections Department (ELD)'s contracted commercial printer Toppan had mistakenly mailed test prints of poll cards, together with the actual poll cards, to 4,803 households, affecting 9,822 voters in Tanjong Pagar Group Representation Constituency (GRC).

Due to a human error, test print data was pooled together with production print data during the actual printing to generate poll cards for voters in Tanjong Pagar GRC. As a result, the affected households received duplicate poll cards. However, the duplicate poll cards showed the correct polling stations and the affected voters were able to vote at their assigned polling stations even if they missed the outreach by ELD on what to do with the duplicate poll cards.

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.

ELD will be instituting new measures to prevent such errors in future. ELD will require the printer to tighten its internal quality assurance processes to ensure that the test print poll cards are not mailed out in future elections.

Beyond this, ELD and the printer will conduct joint checks to ensure that all test print poll cards are destroyed before the production of actual poll cards. ELD and the printer will also perform a sampling audit to check that the details in the poll cards are accurate. 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.

I would like to assure Members that ELD will continue to work with the printer to tighten processes and ensure that these safeguards are properly implemented in future elections.

Mr Speaker: Ms Joan Pereira, keep your supplementary questions short. We are approaching the end of Question Time.

Ms Joan Pereira (Tanjong Pagar): Thank you, Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister how the problem was identified and whether there had been any confusion or problems reported to be faced by affected Tanjong Pagar GRC voters on the actual polling day? And were there any voters who were unable to vote as a result of this issue?

Mr Chan Chun Sing: Mr Speaker, Sir, let me make three points in response to the supplementary questions by Ms Joan Pereira.

First, there is no change in the process. It is the same process by the same printer, done many times previously. How the mistake arose was that, in this particular time, they did not expunge the test data before they printed. So, they printed the whole series together. It is the same process. It is the same printer. So, we will work with the printer to make sure that we tighten this up.

The second point, in response to the question, while some of the affected households and voters received two poll cards, both poll cards showed the same polling station, which means that so long as the voter turned up at the same polling station, they would have no problem getting into the polling station to vote. What was different between the two poll cards for those affected is what we call the serial number. The serial number does not determine whether a person can vote or not. The NRIC or the passport, in this case, is the one that allows us to verify the person's identity to go inside to vote.

On the third issue, no, we do not believe that anybody was not able to vote because they received a duplicate poll card.

1.17 pm

Mr Speaker: Order. End of Question Time. Introduction of Government Bills. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance.

[Pursuant to Standing Order No 22(3), provided that Members had not asked for questions standing in their names to be postponed to a later Sitting day or withdrawn, written answers to questions not reached by the end of Question Time are reproduced in the Appendix.]