Campaigns calling for the ousting of the poll commissioners have gathered momentum in the wake of reports of alleged irregularities in the March 24 general election.
A group of activists, led by Sirawith Seritiwat, yesterday set up a desk on the skywalk linking the National Stadium with the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre for people to sign a petition to remove the seven election commissioners, accusing them of mishandling last Sunday's election.
The same activity will be held again today near Victory Monument.
Mr Sirawith said many students from at least 18 universities all over the country and civil society groups had loosely formed the "People's Coalition for a Fair Election" and his group was a part of it.
The coalition has accepted 3,000 signatures. Once the number reaches 10,000, it will submit the list to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) to ask it to remove the commissioners on April 9.
Section 234 of the constitution empowers the NACC to investigate and give opinions on whether holders of positions at independent bodies have intentionally abused their power or seriously violated the code of ethics. After that, the NACC votes on whether to send the case to the Supreme Court.
Earlier, a netizen using the name "We Love Thailand" launched an online petition on Change.org to unseat the EC. It was reported that more than 800,000 people have already signed the petition.
Srisuwan Janya, secretary-general of the Association for the Protection of the Constitution, will today hold a signature-collecting campaign to oust the seven election commissioners at Talad Ying Charoen in Don Muang.
Also today, a group of activists led by Waranchai Chokchana will hold an activity outside Thammasat University, Tha Phrachan campus, to support the Pheu Thai Party forming a government.
Among the alleged irregularities found is a discrepancy in the number of voters, which was 13% more than reported in the previous announcement. On March 24 the commission said voter turnout was 65.9%, or 33,775,230, but on Thursday it said that the turnout was 74.7% and the number of votes was 38,268,375.
The EC explained that some 2.9 million advance votes and 100,000 ballots from foreign countries had not been included in the first announcement. As well, the earlier count was based on 93% of total votes and Thursday's announcement was based on 100%.
But observers have argued that the advance votes had to be sent to be counted at their respective constituencies on election day so the results should have already included them.
At some stations, the number of voters also fell short of the ballot count and some advance ballots were sent to the wrong constituencies, which led to all of them being nullified.