GE2015: What happens during the Singapore elections?

What happens during the Singapore elections?

Political parties are gearing up for the General Election in Singapore. But nothing is set in stone until the Singapore parliament has been dissolved and the President has issued the Writ of Election, done upon advice of the prime minister. As of press time, the Writ of Election has not been issued.

Under the law, the general election must be held within the three months after the parliament has been dissolved.

The Writ of Election and Nomination Day

The president will issue the Writ of Election to the Returning Officer, the civil servant who is tasked to ensure the impartiality of the coming election.

Once the Writ of Election has been issued, the Returning Officer will state the time period for Nomination Day, where political candidates will be nominated for the coming general election.

Candidate nominations will have to be submitted at least five days after the Writ of Election has been announced. The closing date for nomination of candidates will be a month after the Writ of the Election.

The electoral deposit that all candidates will have to pay will also be announced. The amount is based on 8 per cent of Minister of Parliament’s allowance from the year before and rounded up to the nearest $500. This amounted to a total of $16,000 per candidate at the 2011 elections.

The nominated candidate may find this sum forfeited if he or she is unable to win a minimum of 12.5 per cent of the votes, however. For example, Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) leader Desmond Lim had to give up his deposit at the 2011 elections. He received only 4.45 per cent of the total number of votes for Punggol East SMC (Single Member Constituency) at the last general election.

At the end of the nomination period, the returning officer will announce the polling date, based on the Group Representation Constituencies (GRC) and wards that nominated candidates will be contesting for at the coming election.

According to the Elections Department, Polling Day should fall between 10 to 56 days after the publication of notice. The names of the nominated candidates as well as the locations of all polling stations will be revealed at the same time.

The rallies begin

Nominated candidates will then be able to start campaigning, up to the day before the date of polls. This date is also typically referred to as the “Cooling Off day”, where campaigning is legally not permitted. Media publication of opinion polls on the elections is also not allowed on the Cooling Off day.

Political campaigning in Singapore can come in the form of election rallies, house-to-house visits in the constituency that they are contesting in, the distribution of pamphlets, as well as the distribution of pamphlets and displays of posters and banners. These however, cannot be displayed on polling day.

By Singapore law, the use of online political advertisements during the campaign period have to be declared to the returning officer before it can be published based on the Parliamentary Elections (Election Advertising) regulations. This includes podcasts, blogs or posts on social media sites such as Facebook.

Voting

On Polling Day, voters will mark their choice of candidate on ballot papers at their assigned polling station.

Once voting has ended, the boxes of ballot papers will be sealed and transported to counting stations, where the votes will be tallied. The vote counting process will be watched by candidates of all participating political parties and their counting agents.

After all votes have been counted, the returning officer will tabulate the results retrieved from all counting centres here.

If the number of overseas votes is unlikely to affect the outcome of the election, the nominated candidate with the greatest number of votes will be elected.

Should the overseas votes affect the outcome, these will be tallied together with the total vote count in Singapore.

These results will then be published in the Singapore Government Gazette, which is the official publication for all public notices by the government. The gazette can also be viewed online at http://www.egazette.com.sg.

Information was collected from the Elections Department website.