The Election Commission (EC) on Friday offered an explanation for why it needs nearly 5 million extra ballots, saying that ballots are normally distributed in bound sets of 20, which inflates the total required.
Extra ballots are required to be kept as spares at all 100,000 polling stations across the country, EC secretary-general Sawaeng Boonmee said in a Facebook post.
A total of 52.23 million people are eligible to vote on May 14, while 57.2 million ballots have been printed in 2.86 million bound sets of 20 ballots each.
“The number of printed ballots treated as spare ballots is therefore 4.96 million,” Mr Sawaeng said.
“One collection of 20 ballots is to be distributed to each of the 100,000 polling stations, meaning that 2 million out of the 4.96 million extra ballots are to be kept for this purpose.”
Another collection of 20 ballots will be distributed to each of the 100,000 polling stations specifically for members of the station committee, whose number normally ranges from nine to 15, depending on the number of voters registered at a station.
“Another 900,000 or so will be used for the two above-mentioned reasons in advance voting both in the country and overseas, while the rest of the spare ballots will be kept for use in case of emergency — such as for the 94 Thai voters who might not be able complete their advance voting in Sudan in the event of a riot,” he said.
“Spare ballots will possibly be used by these voters when they return to Thailand and vote on May 14 instead.”
