Thailand: Key Thai Democrat disagrees with Election Commission’s Yingluck noodle probe | Bangkok Post

Democrat Party spokesman Buranaj Smutharaks says he opposes an Election Commission investigation into allegations that Yingluck Shinawatra, likely the next prime minister, broke the election law by giving food to voters.

Mr Buranaj yesterday said he disagreed with the EC’s move to investigate an allegation that Ms Yingluck violated election law when she fried noodles and distributed them to voters during a May 31 campaign stop in Nakhon Ratchasima province. Mr Buranaj said cooking in front of voters was a common campaign activity and the leaders of other parties had also done this during their campaigns.

The EC has already received the findings of the investigation into the matter by the Nakhon Ratchasima provincial election commission. The EC is set to consider the case on Tuesday.

Thailand: Election Commission reveals invalid votes reached 5% | Bangkok Post

The high number of invalid ballots cast for constituency candidates resulted from voters marking a cross in the wrong boxes, particularly the boxes of parties which had not fielded candidates in that particular constituency, the Election Commission said. EC secretary-general Suthipol Thaweechaikarn yesterday announced unofficial counts of invalid ballots cast in Sunday’s election.

The counts showed that the total number of invalid ballots cast for constituency candidates accounted for 5.74% of all ballots cast.

Invalid constituency ballots outnumbered invalid ballots cast for party-list candidates, which stood at 4.88%, Mr Suthipol said. The average rate of invalid ballots for both election systems was 4-5% which is not much different from that of the 2007 general election, he said.

Thailand: Election Commission admits technical glitches in Thai advance election | mcot.net

Election Commission (EC) secretary-general Suthipol Thaweechaikarn on Monday admitted that there were some technical glitches in the advance election on Sunday as slightly over 50 per cent of eligible voters who had registered for advance voting exercised their rights.

Mr Suthipol said the advance election nationwide was run smoothly in general, with some 1.49 million voters or 55.6 per cent of some 2.6 million voters who had registered for advance voting outside their constituencies casting their ballots. Meanwhile, some 90 per cent of voters who registered to vote in advance at their constituencies exercised their rights.