Chan Chun Sing says issue of Tanjong Pagar voters being given duplicate poll cards was due to “human error” by printing company

SINGAPORE: On Monday (Sep 18), Minister-in-charge of the Public Service Chan Chun Sing addressed questions from Members of Parliament (MPs) on the issue of 4,803 households, or 9,822 voters, in the Tanjong Pagar Group Representation Constituency (GRC) receiving two poll cards during the 2023 Presidential Election in August.

Mr Chan said that the issue resulted from “human error” by printing company Toppan, who had mailed test prints of the poll cards along with the actual poll cards. Responding to MP of Tanjong Pagar Joan Pereira’s question on whether any voters could not vote due to the issue, Mr Chan replied: “No, we don’t believe that anybody was not able to vote because they received a duplicate poll card.”

The duplicate poll cards did show the correct polling stations for the voters and affected voters could vote accordingly.

“Processes are also in place to ensure that the voters with two poll cards can only vote once as all voters must produce their NRIC or valid passport as proof of identification, which is verified against the polling station registers,” Mr Chan said.

In addressing the matter, Mr Chan noted that despite the duplicate polling cards having different serial numbers, the latter “does not determine whether a person can vote or not”.

He also said that moving forward, the Elections Department (ELD) will be putting in place measures to prevent such errors from taking place in the future. These include requiring the printer company to “tighten its internal quality assurance processes”. He also said that the ELD and printer company will conduct joint checks to ensure the test prints are destroyed and perform a sampling audit to check the accuracy of the information in the poll cards.

Earlier this year in August, residents of more than 4,800 households in Tanjong Pagar received two poll cards for the upcoming presidential election due to an error made by the appointed printer.

The Elections Department (ELD) said in a statement that the printer, Toppan, had erroneously sent out test prints of poll cards together with the correct poll cards to a total of 4,803 households – with 9,822 voters – in Tanjong Pagar GRC. Of these 9,822 individuals, 9,354 received two poll cards with different voter serial numbers. The remaining 468 voters received two poll cards with identical information. /TISG