The petition will be filed with the Central Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct Cases, party spokesman Parit Watcharasindhu said at a briefing in Bangkok on Saturday (Feb 14).
Mr Parit pointed to three issues arising from an EC briefing on Friday, in which officials responded to widespread public concerns that the features could be used to trace who voted for whom and compromise ballot secrecy, reports the Bangkok Post.
“According to the EC, in theory, voters can be identified by using three components: the codes, the counterfoils and the voters’ list,” he said.
The first issue was violation of the principle of vote secrecy, as ballots should never allow voter identities to be traced, he said.
Secondly, there was a major loophole that could allow parties or candidates to exploit codes to track votes, Mr Parit said.
Despite the EC’s insistence that counterfoils were securely stored, he said that if a political party or candidate had prior knowledge of the coding features, they could force voters to disclose the needed component before casting their ballots.
Alternatively, if polling station officials acted improperly, they could secretly photograph the counterfoils and send them to individuals engaged in such practices, Mr Parit said, adding that this could be done without access to the EC’s official records.
‘Impracticable’ or impossible?
When reporters on Friday pressed EC officials on whether barcodes on ballots could be matched with counterfoils to identify how an individual voted, they were told it would be “highly impracticable”.
However, when asked if “highly impracticable” meant impossible, an EC spokesman said a person would have to go to extraordinary lengths and commit several illegal acts.
Mr Parit said the long-term risk of voting data leaks was also a potential problem. If such sensitive data, enabling profiling of voters by gender, age or region, were leaked or accessed, it could be used to gain advantage in future elections, he said.
The party has assigned Wayo Asawarungruang, a deputy party leader, to gather facts and proceed with the petition against the EC and its secretary-general under Section 157 of the Criminal Code, regarding wrongful exercise of duties.
‘Not a bid to overturn poll results’
Mr Parit said his party’s intensive scrutiny of election transparency over the past five days was not an attempt to overturn the election results or to reject defeat.
The party wanted to ensure that every citizen’s vote was accurately recorded, regardless of which party they supported, he said, adding that officials who acted negligently or engaged in fraud must be held legally accountable to establish a precedent for trustworthy elections in the future.
Mr Parit pointed to irregularities in the two-ballot system (constituency and party-list ballots), noting mismatched numbers in several constituencies such as Songkhla constituency 3 and Si Sa Ket constituency 2. He said evidence the party found came from official tally boards at polling stations, not the EC website, which the commission blamed for reporting errors.
The party demanded clarification on the issue and called for the release of complete tally reports (Form 5/18) and vote-marking sheets (Form 5/11) at each unit to ensure transparency.
“Other constituencies in question included places where the People’s Party won elections, which demonstrates that the party’s scrutiny is not intended to increase its number of MPs but only to protect the votes of citizens,” Mr Parit noted.
Overall complaints
People’s Party candidates have received a total of 57 complaints, of which 37 have already been formally submitted to the EC for investigation, deputy party leader Kittichai Techakulvanich said.
Meanwhile, citizens have filed more than 4,000 complaints through the party’s report69 website.
After review, 1,260 were found to contain sufficient information and evidence to proceed, and the party’s legal team has forwarded these to its candidates to lodge formal objections against the announcement of results, Mr Kittichai said.
Party officials also reported a new complaint from constituency 6 in Samut Prakan, where a citizen submitted a video showing election materials dated Feb 8 discarded at a landfill.
The discovery prompted calls for the EC to investigate and explain to the public how such official documents ended up at a landfill, Mr Kittichai said.
The outcry over ballot papers is the latest in a series of complaints about the handling of the Feb 8 poll. Voters and political parties have flagged thousands of instances nationwide, ranging from mishandling of ballots and ballot boxes to discrepancies in vote totals and online updates, and misbehaviour by polling officials.
Six days after the vote, the unofficial count remains stalled at 94% of total ballots cast. The EC has given no indication of when an update can be expected, saying only that it has 60 days to release an official result.