Anfrel: Advance voting went well | Bangkok Post: news

While commending Sunday's advance voting as relatively well managed, the Asian Network for Free Election (Anfrel) has urged the Election Commission (EC) to place more emphasis on the quality of polling booth officials and called for transparent storage and counting of ballots and transporting of votes cast outside home provinces.

The Anfrel report said  advance voting on Sunday, in which nearly three million voters had registered to vote early in or outside their home electorates,  was quite a development for Thailand, said the Bangkok-based free election advocacy group.

Voters across the country were able to cast their ballots in a largely quiet and well managed election environment, thanks to the EC and all supporting organisations, the Anfrel report released on Monday said.

However, 60 international observers across the country had found some hiccups due to the EC's use of old lists from the  3.3 million voters who registered to vote in advance in 2007.

Some advance voters were not aware that their names remained on the old advance voting list in their former area of residence.

"This fact left them unable to vote this year in their actual constituencies unless they had previously notified the EC of their return home," the Anfrel report said.

As an alternative to the current system, advance voting registration should automatically expire at the end of each election period, it said.