The Timeline of Events Before Polling Day That Every S’porean Should Know About

By
Boon Hun
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In case you’ve missed it, Parliament is dissolved as of 23 Jun 2020.

PM Lee took to the stage to announce that he has advised the President to dissolve the parliament and issue a writ of election.

To make it less cheem, he’s simply saying that GE2020 is coming soon. Very soon.

Then, a few hours later, it was revealed that polling day will be on 10 Jul 2020, a Friday.

Because all polling days are public holidays, he’s essentially giving Singaporeans a long weekend.

Image: Gfycat

But what’s going to happen between now (24 Jun) and 10 Jul?

Don’t worry if you don’t know because that’s what Goody Feed is here for, to cover your back so you can sound impressive when chatting with your family and friends.

So without further ado, let’s get started:

The Timeline of Events Before Polling Day That Every S’porean Should Know About

23 Jun 2020: Dissolution of Parliament and President issuing the writ of election.

Well, that has happened, which means we’re now looking forward to the next day, which is…

30 Jun 2020: Nomination Day 

It must be held “no earlier than 5 days” and “no later than a month” after the writ of election is issued.

In GE2020, Nomination Day is 7 days after the writ of election is issued.

By the way, Nomination Day is also a Friday but it’s just a normal day so you’ll still be hard at work.

These places would be the nomination centres:

30 Jun – 8 Jul: Campaigning For Political Candidates

Political candidates’ campaigns start from Nomination Day (30 Jun) for a minimum period of 9 days.

This year, political candidates have to abide by special rules in view of the Covid-19 outbreak.

No physical rally is allowed, which is understandable since rallies usually look like this (for a certain party in a certain area):

Image: HWZ

However, candidates are still allowed to go on walkabouts and make door-to-door campaigning efforts in groups of not more than 5.

Groups must also keep a 1-metre distance from each other.

Be prepared for your estate to get noisy as well as different political parties’ vehicles cruise around broadcasting the party message…loudly.

Political candidates will also be allocated TV airtime to make up for the lack of rallies.

You can find out more here.

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9 Jul 2020: Cooling Off Day

As the name suggests, this day is to let everyone just cool off from the campaigning of the previous 9 days.

Political candidates are not allowed to campaign for 24 hours, including:

  • Publishing and displaying of any campaign material including through the phone or the internet
  • Home or workplace visits
  • Wearing or displaying of any party insignia or materials
  • The holding of election meetings and rallies

There are some exceptions, however:

  • Party political broadcast on TV
  • Reports on election news in mainstream media
  • Approved posters and banners, lawful internet advertising that was all published or put up before Cooling-Off day.
  • Books previously scheduled for publication
  • Personal political views by individuals to individuals on a non-commercial basis
  • Such activities or circumstances as may be described by the Minister

The Election Department (ELD) takes this day seriously.

Back in 2016, a police report was made by the ELD over several candidates who breached the Cooling Day measures.

WP and netizens cried foul as PAP candidates who previously breached the Cooling Day measures back in 2011 were let off with a warning.

In response, ELD merely said that in 2016, the breaches were “deliberate” and “serious breaches”.

Seeing as how online advertising might just be the main mode of campaigning for most political parties in Singapore, we sure hope they remember to cut off their advertisements on 8 Jul 2020 or they might just find themselves going to the station for a cup of coffee.

10 Jul 2020: Polling Day

On Polling Day, 2,653,942 voters will be heading to the polls. That is, if everyone goes and vote lah.

Voting windows (each person is given a timeslot to vote instead of OTOT (own-time-own-target)) will be allocated to spread out the crowd.

Image: Election Department

Other safety measures include temperature screening, electronic registrations, disposable gloves and more which you can read about here.

There’s even a website where you can go to check if your polling station is crowded or not, just like Daiso’s crowd-checking website.

Except it doesn’t have past data trends since, well, polling day only happens once every few years.

And after this? Life goes back to normal and we wait for the GST hike to arrive.

So there you go, everything you need to know about the events before Polling Day on 10 Jul 2020, simplified for you.

To stay in the loop about news in Singapore, you might want to subscribe to our YouTube channel whereby we’d update you about what’s happening here daily:

Watch this for a complete summary of what REALLY happened to Qoo10, and why it's like a K-drama:

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Boon Hun
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