THE CASE OF THE REAPPEARANCE OF EMPTY BALLOT BOXES

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The official explanation so far, after the counting is over, the ballot boxes would be disposed off by contractors. So there would no longer be consequential to the election and not really meaningful or accountable. A few seen floating around and reappearing would just reflect that the contractors were ‘slaykay’ at most, nothing to worry about. There is no need to make a case out of the two boxes found and nothing serious really. Let’s move on, this part I say one.

Two of the Presidential candidates are still not happy and smelling foul. What is the real system of checks and balance? Would all the empty boxes be part and parcel of the election process and must all be accounted and destroyed together without any one left floating around. Did they claim that something is amissed?

Presumably, this part I guess one, since I have not been a polling agent and thus would not know what is the correct procedure. Presumably, at the end of the counting of the ballots, all the ballot papers would be placed in these same ballot boxes to be transported to the High Court for safe keeping. There was no need to pack them into the same boxes according to the area or groupings they came from, but in some of the boxes would do. Presumably they were not packed into new or different boxes that were brought in for this purpose. Presumably, some boxes would be empty if all the boxes were fully stuffed.

Presumably every box was a controlled item and there would be an officer to count them and check them out, X number used for ballot papers and Y number extra were empty. Presumably the total would match and all squared up.

Then the puzzling part, should all the boxes, as they were controlled items, be sent together to the High Court and eventually be destroyed together? Looks like this is not the case and those extra boxes were left behind to be removed and destroyed by the contractors after counting was done. They became not controlled items. If this be the case, then the reappearance of the five empty boxes needs not be an issue. It was just a slip by a slipshod contractor on non controlled items.

But if the procedure is for all the ballot boxes, empty or otherwise, to be destroyed together and kept together, then people may ask how come these controlled items could be left behind as they were countables and if missing would not do? But then again, as an after event, ie, after the ballot papers had been properly delivered on the counting tables, the missing boxes would just be a technical issue and would not affect the results.

This does not mean that imaginations cannot go wild like the boxes were already missing and switched before the counting. The understanding or assumption at the moment is that they were left there after counting. Is this assumption and understanding true or reasonable? Or is this proven, a fact? This, I presume, would be playing in the minds of those who wanted to see mischief. But this is highly impossible as the polling agents would have their eyes glued to these boxes and no one could take them away without being noticed. It could only happen if there was a gap in which the ballot boxes were out of sight from the polling agents while they were on the way to the polling stations. Presumably there was no such window to begin with.

So? What do you think?



Chua Chin Leng AKA Red Bean

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