SINGAPORE — Education Minister Chan Chun Sing, who is also the Minister-in-charge- of the Public Service introduced two Bills in Parliament – the Presidential Elections (Amendment) Bill and the Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Bill – for their first reading on Feb 6 which proposed the introduction of postal voting for overseas Singaporeans, updates on elections advertising laws, and enhancing the election expenses regime.
The Elections Department (ELD), which is under the Prime Minister’s Office, said in a media release that these amendments are an ongoing effort to improve the electoral processes.
Improving / strengthening voting arrangements
To improve voting accessibility for overseas Singaporeans, the Bills provide for Singaporeans residing overseas to vote by post. The marked ballot papers must be posted before Polling Day in Singapore and received by ELD within 10 days after Polling Day for it to be accepted for counting.
There will be special polling stations set-up within the premises of the nursing homes for the convenience of the residents. The Bills also provide for mobile polling teams to be deployed for residents to cast their votes by the bed.
Among the proposed changes to strengthen the electoral process, the Bill also seeks to provide greater flexibility for the setting up of polling stations in each constituency. Currently, a polling station can only be set-up within the specific electoral division boundary. To provide greater convenience to voters who are residing near the electoral boundary, the Bills allow for polling stations to be set up in the adjacent electoral division.
Elections Advertising Laws
The Bills also seek to promote ‘responsible and informed’ voting, by enhancing transparency, accountability and traceability. Transparency by allowing voters to know who is communicating the election advertising; and accountability and traceability by making persons involved in the publishing or displaying of the election advertising responsible for their communications and ensuring that obligations imposed can be enforced.
If the proposed amendments are passed, it means that all election advertising, whether paid or unpaid, are required to display the full name of the person/s who played an active role in – publishing, approving the election advertising, or directed the election advertising to be published, or paid for the advertising. Those exempted from the new proposed Bills are individual citizens who are not candidates or election agents and published any online election advertising in their personal capacity, and did not pay, receive payment or were directed by others to do so.
According to the ELD, as forms of media and communications continue to evolve, the Bills proposed to bring the amplification of existing online election advertising such as boosting, sharing, resharing, and reposting, be subjected to the same requirements as publishing new election advertising materials. Such action increases the reach of the content to more users and has the same effect as publishing fresh content.
The Bills will also empower the Returning Officer to issue corrective directions for any online elections advertising breaches. The Returning Officer can direct any content publisher for the removal of any online elections advertising, disable access, stop or reduce access to the election advertising to Singapore end-users.
Proposed changes to the Presidential Elections (Amendment) Bill
There are proposed amendments to the Presidential Elections Act, which aims to streamline the process to remove the requirement for the Presidential Election Committee to consider applications from those aged below 45 years old, and those who do not submit a community declaration for the community that the election is reserved for. /TISG