Many unexpected things happened on Polling Day in GE2020.
Queues were so long that some residents thought a new A&W outlet had opened, voting hours had to be extended, and a white cat was more interesting than the newscasters who were stalling while waiting for the elections results to be released.
But something else of note occurred on that fateful day: a woman accused a polling agent of telling her who to vote for.
Two months later, the police have concluded their investigations and determined that nothing inappropriate had taken place.
A Brief Recap
For those of you who’ve forgotten everything about Polling Day, including who you voted for, here’s a brief recap of what happened.
In a now-deleted Facebook post, a user had alleged that a polling agent who assisted her mother “had told her who to vote for.”
The user’s sister had accompanied their 80-year-old mother to vote during her allotted time-band between 8am and 10am, and a polling agent offered to help.
The polling agent had then allegedly insisted she vote for the PAP and had shown her where to mark her vote.
Police reports were lodged on the same day, according to The New Paper.
Police: No Evidence to Support Allegations
After two months of investigations, however, the police have determined that there’s no evidence to support the claims of the Facebook user.
They first concluded that it was an election official, and not a polling agent who assisted the elderly woman.
“All polling agents are confined to a specific area in the polling station to observe the polling process and they are not allowed to assist voters”, the Elections Department (ELD) said in a statement.
“For voters who need assistance, our election officials may explain the method of voting…”.
They added that these election officials are trained to do this audibly or loudly, “to ensure that polling agents can hear the conversation.”
A First Time Voter
The police said they interviewed and took statements from the 80-year-old woman, who is a first-time voter, as well as her two daughters, one of whom made the allegations.
They also recorded statements from the polling agents and election officials present at the time.
Based on their investigations, the police concluded that the election official was simply explaining the voting procedure to the elderly woman, after the woman asked for help.
The official told her to open up the ballot paper, place it on top of the voting booth, and use the self-inking pen on one of the two boxes provided, according to her choice of party.
When she was interviewed, the 80-year-old said she heard the official telling her twice to “put it on top”, but did not hear her say to vote for any one party.
“She did not at any time tell the voter to vote for any particular party”, a police spokesman confirmed.
The daughter who accompanied her mother said there could have been some miscommunication between her mother and the official as she was old, and also because she was nervous about voting for the first time.
So, there you have it. It was a simple case of miscommunication, and not some big conspiracy theory.
Reader: I’m slightly disappointed, to be honest.
Well, real life isn’t Netflix, dear reader. That’s something we all have to accept.
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