SINGAPORE: Insufficient resources at large polling stations, uneven voter turnout as well as the need for COVID-19 safety measures contributed to the "abnormally long queues" at some polling stations during the 2020 General Election, said the Elections Department (ELD) on Thursday (Sep 10).
Local voter turnout at 95.63 per cent was the highest since the 1997 General Election.
AdvertisementAdvertisementThere were "longer than usual queues" at 199 of 1,097 polling stations on polling day. "However, 68 polling stations saw sustained long queues in the afternoon and 47 polling stations (had) sustained long queues throughout the day," said ELD in its review.
NECESSARY COVID-19 SAFETY MEASURES
Necessary COVID-19 safe management measures were among the reasons for the delays, the department said.
Measures such as temperature taking, putting on disposable gloves and hand sanitising, as well as the 1m safe distancing requirement contributed to the lengthening of queues.
AdvertisementAdvertisement"These measures were necessary and effective ... There were no reported COVID-19 community cases affecting voters and election officials as a result of their participation in GE2020," said the ELD.
"However, the precautionary measures also contributed to a reduction in the efficiency of polling."
[h=3]READ: GE2020: ELD apologises for polling station queues, says gloves requirement contributed to long wait times[/h]To reduce waiting time, ELD did away with the requirement to don disposable gloves in the early part of the morning of polling day, as "voters would have already sanitised their hands".
The queue situation at most polling stations improved significantly by 11am, said ELD.
LARGE POLLING STATIONS
Twenty-five large polling stations should have been better resourced with more election officers or e-registration devices.
In GE2020, there were 1,097 polling stations, up from 832 in GE2015, to allow for safe distancing. A total of 36,000 election officials were deployed, 20 per cent more than in GE2015.
The average number of voters per polling station was about 2,400.
However, 25 polling stations had more than 4,400 voters, of which 22 experienced long voter queues.
"There were also a number of large (polling stations) in previous GEs, so size alone was not a factor for the long queues. But size combined with the precautionary measures must have aggravated the situation," said ELD.
"Some premises also had two (polling stations), and the two queues merged into one some distance away from the polling area, further lengthening the queues."
ELD proposes that the pool of reserve manpower and equipment be increased for future elections.
[h=3]READ: GE2020: ELD to conduct voter survey on experience at polling stations[/h]"We will increase the reserve pool of EOs, who can be deployed quickly to (polling stations) to augment the onsite team to handle contingencies, including any unforeseen build-ups in queues," said ELD.
It will also provide more e-registration devices and put in place "more robust redundancies" to replace faulty devices.
Issues with e-Registration devices were reported at GE2020. The pre-COVID-19 plan was for election officials to scan voters' NRICs.
"However, with the COVID-19 situation, voters were asked to self-scan their NRICs," ELD said, adding that some voters were unfamiliar with the devices.
The department had intended to hold roadshows to familiarise voters with the devices, but these had to be called off amid the pandemic.
"For GE2020, the procurement of e-registration devices was done before COVID-19, and the vendor could not supply more devices to create a comfortable buffer in time to match the increased number of PSs due to the COVID-19 situation," added ELD.
The department proposes that the number of voters at large polling stations be reduced in future elections.
"Wherever feasible, ELD will split large polling stations. For GE2020, larger polling stations at HDB void decks and pavilions were split into two due to their small available spaces, but larger polling stations at schools and community clubs were not," the department said.
If the stations cannot be split, the large stations will be "better organised and resourced" for future elections.
[h=3]READ: Woman did not get to vote on Polling Day due to 'human error and miscommunication': ELD[/h]ALLOCATED TIME-BANDS DID NOT WORK
Voter turnout was not evenly spread out across the voting hours, despite the allocated time-bands for voting that were introduced at GE2020.
ELD's recommended time-bands in the morning were allocated to senior voters, but one-third of voters in the morning were non-senior voters.
The higher concentration of senior voters in the morning also slowed down voter flow-through rate, as more of them required support and assistance from election officers.
At the same time, some polling stations with significantly high proportions of younger voters also saw queues in the afternoon, due to the large number of voters and the smaller 7-hour voting window, after excluding the morning window reserved for seniors and the 7pm to 8pm special voting hour.
As such, "the allocated time-bands did not succeed in spreading out voter turnout evenly through the day", said ELD.
Should the time-band allocation be continued in future elections, ELD said it will allocate fewer voters 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.
"In retrospect, we should not have concentrated all senior voters in the morning," said ELD.
"Going forward, we will see how best to spread out senior and non-senior voters across time-bands. Given our ageing population, we will also review the logistics (e.g. wheelchairs and availability of seats), and the location and set-up of our PSs to ensure that they are well accessible to our senior voters."
[h=3]BOOKMARK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of GE2020 and its developments[/h]Download our app or subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates: https://cna.asia/telegram
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