Democrat IT rep eyed for fraud after copying code

A Democrat Party committee supervising the election of a new party leader will look into a complaint that an information technology team of former Democrat MP Warong Dechgitvigrom, one of three contenders for the party leadership, had copied a source code from an electronic voting system -- an act which could lead to possible fraud.

Jermmas Juenglertsiri, secretary-general of the committee, said the panel will investigate the matter.

She said copying a source code from the system is a breach of an agreement reached between the IT representatives of the three contenders for the party leadership. Apart from Mr Warong, the other two contenders are incumbent party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, and former party deputy leader Alongkorn Ponlaboot.

The three contenders have sent IT representatives to work with the party election panel on the party's electronic voting. The IT representatives have agreed they can have access to source codes of the system, and will not copy them and take them outside because this will lead to possible election fraud.

Regarding the e-vote by party members in the southern and northeastern branches on Monday, Ms Jermmas said there was a slight delay due to a glitch in internet signalling, so the voting deadline had to be extended from 6pm to 8pm on Monday. But apart from the internet glitch, the overall voting procedure proceeded smoothly, she said.

She added that party members can now use an iOS-based mobile phone app to vote online starting from noon Tuesday until Friday, in addition to an Android-based mobile phone app. Thailand's oldest political party introduced an electronic voting system for party members to elect its new party leader last Thursday.

However, the party was forced to postpone the planned e-voting in Bangkok, the North and the Central Plains branches last Thursday, after the Raspberry Pi computer-based voting system which the party installed to serve the election failed to function due to an error on the part of their IT staff, who forgot to adjust the system's timezone settings. The system would have been working from 3pm on Nov 1 to 1am Nov 2 due to the error.

The party consequently rescheduled the vote to Friday.