GE2020: ICA apologises to 101 overseas Singaporeans unable to vote due to glitch
SINGAPORE — The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) has apologised to 101 overseas Singaporeans, who will not be able to vote at the General Election on 10 July (Friday).
This is due to a glitch in the system that processes registration of the local contact addresses of overseas voters, ICA said in a joint media release with Elections Department (ELD) on Saturday.
“ICA will improve the robustness of our systems and tighten our processes. ICA apologises to the 101 Singapore citizens affected by the glitch and is reaching out to them,” the media release said.
Process to register overseas Singaporean voters
Singaporeans who have changed their NRIC address to an overseas address and wish to vote in an election are required to register a local contact address via ELD’s website, so that ELD can allot the voter an electoral division to vote in.
The registration is then electronically transmitted to ICA, which will send hard-copy letters to the address owners for confirmation. The address owners will need to sign and return the acknowledgement portion for ELD to prepare the Registers of Electors.
The deadline for this process was on 15 April. ELD said that 168 Singaporeans, including those living overseas, had been added to the Registers, making a total of 2,653,942 registered voters.
Glitch caused letters not to be generated
However, ICA uncovered a glitch in its system which failed to generate the hard-copy letters to be sent to the address owners. As a result, ELD would not have received confirmed local contact addresses for these Singaporeans from ICA, and hence did not include their names in the Registers of Electors.
Given that the Registers were certified on 15 April, these 101 Singaporeans will not be able to vote in the GE.
Those who wish to seek further clarifications can email ICA at ICA_IC_Unit@ica.gov.sg.
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