Thai election monitoring group says video does not show poll staff 'filling in ballots'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on May 18, 2023 at 09:00
- Updated on May 18, 2023 at 12:42
- 4 min read
- By AFP Thailand
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"Election commission staff are involved in mass fraud. Marking (the ballots) without concern. Please help share this clip with pro-democratic groups," reads the Thai-language caption of a Facebook post from May 11, 2023.
"Everyone has received an order from who? We (the people) see you."
The 19-second video shows Thai Election Commission staff working in a room filled with boxes and papers.
Thailand's progressive Move Forward Party claimed victory in the country's election on May 14, as voters turned out in record numbers to deliver a brutal verdict on the near-decade-long rule of former coup leader Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha (archived link).
The video was shared alongside identical claims here and here on Facebook.
It also circulated on TikTok here, here and here alongside similar captions.
Not voting ballots
Ahead of the elections, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) announced it had installed security cameras in locations where voting ballots were placed and granted access to live camera feeds (archived link).
The footage circulating online is identical to this screenshot from a local news report of one of the poll station livestreams (archived link).
Text in the livestream's top left-hand corner indicates the screenshot was captured on May 10 at 7:16 pm, as shown in the comparisons below:
In response to the misleading social media posts, the Thai election commission published a statement clarifying that they show polling station officers signing ballot cover pages as part of their routine administrative duties (archived link).
"The Election Commission would like to state that the video clip has circulated alongside misleading reports that it shows the signing of ballot front covers before they are sent to the polling stations," the statement reads.
"We can confirm that the officials did not mark the ballot for the eligible voters."
Pongsak Chanon, director of election monitoring group We Watch Thailand, also told AFP on May 12 that the documents shown in the clip were ballot cover pages, not the ballots themselves (archived link).
"Our war room has also investigated this issue," he said. "We can confirm that the documents signed were front covers for the ballots."
Examples of front covers for voting ballots were featured on page 10 of the election commission's manual for handling voting ballots (archived link).
The manual explains that after the number of ballots has been checked by an election official, he or she must sign their name on the ballot booklet's front cover before they can be sent to polling stations.
Below is a screenshot of a sample image of the ballot booklet front cover, published on the Facebook page of the Royal Thai Embassy in the UK (archived link):
Below is a screenshot comparison of the document seen in the misleading posts (left) and an image of the same document in the Thai election commission's manual (right):
On page 64 of the commission's manual, it further explains how poll staff must register voting ballots before sending them to polling stations.
"(1.1) Voting ballot - Check the book number, identification number, number of ballots, and the seal on all voting ballots," it says. "Then the recipient must sign their name as evidence on the front cover of each ballot booklet."
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