SINGAPORE — Drawing from the experience of the last election in 2020, the Elections Department (ELD) will set up more polling stations for the coming Presidential Election and future elections, to reduce voters' waiting times.

If contested, the Presidential Election will be held later this year, by Sept 13 or shortly after. The next General Election is due by 2025. 

The ELD announced on Monday (July 24) that it will increase the number of polling stations by 15 per cent, from 1,097 in the 2020 General Election to 1,264 in subsequent elections.

This will bring down the average number of voters allocated to each polling station from 2,400 to 2,150 — or a reduction of about 10 per cent.

Polling stations will also have more registration and ballot paper counters to reduce waiting time for voters.

A new stamp, called an X-stamp, will be introduced in upcoming elections for voters mark their choice on the ballot paper.

Unlike the X-pen, which was introduced at polling stations last election and was sometimes misunderstood to be an actual pen, the new stamp will have a bigger width and offer better grip for voters.

Voters will still be able to mark the ballot papers with regular pens in upcoming elections as well.

It will also be more convenient for voters to check the queue status at their polling stations from subsequent elections onwards. A QR code will be available on their poll card for them to scan and check the number of people in the queue at their designated polling station.

In the last election, voters had to key in the URL of the VoteQ website to check the queue status at their polling stations. 

POSTAL VOTING PROCEDURE

The Government had previously announced that overseas postal voting will be implemented for the first time from this year's Presidential Election onwards. Registration for overseas voting will close on the second day after the Writ of Election is issued.

Overseas Singaporeans who choose to vote by post must ensure that their return envelopes containing the marked postal ballots reach the Returning Officer in Singapore no later than 10 days after Polling Day.

Before the introduction of postal voting, overseas Singaporeans had to travel to one of 10 polling stations worldwide to cast their vote. This resulted in some Singaporeans being unable to vote during the 2020 General Election when travel restrictions were implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic.

When counting of overseas votes begins, officials will first sieve out envelopes that cannot be counted, such as those which are torn or have late postmarks, dated after the eve of Polling Day in Singapore.

The remaining return envelopes will then be authenticated via a unique QR code printed on it. The signature on the return envelope will also be matched electronically against what was submitted by the voter during registration.

Once authenticated, officials will retrieve the postal ballots from the return envelopes for counting. 

These postal ballots will be mixed with ballot papers cast at overseas polling stations first before counting starts. Counting agents and candidates will witness the counting, as is currently the practice.