Public servants receive notification of election duties and online training

SINGAPORE — Some public servants from various ministries and statutory boards have been sent notices of appointment as election officials by the Elections Department (ELD) since as early as mid-March, TODAY has learnt. 

The department has also asked some of these public servants to attend online training to learn about their election appointment and the election process, instructing them to log in to an ELD website meant for election officials.

Several public servants have received emails from the ELD — some last month and others in the past week — notifying them of their appointments, five public servants told TODAY on the condition of anonymity. 

Two of them confirmed that they have received the notification themselves. 

The latest appointments come ahead of the looming September 2023 expiration date for President Halimah Yacob’s term of office. 

Madam Halimah, 67, was sworn in as the eighth president of Singapore on Sept 14, 2017 — a day after she successfully filed her nomination papers as the sole eligible candidate for that year’s reserved Presidential Election.

Each elected president will hold office for a six-year term. As there is no term limit to the presidency, presidents can run for an unlimited number of terms.

Although it is unclear what the lead time was between ELD’s notifying of public servants and past presidential elections, for the 2020 General Election (GE), public servants were called up for training about 24 months before the polls were held. 

That timeframe for past general elections was about 12 months for GE2015, about 18 months for GE2011 and about 31 months for GE2006.

Prior to GE2006, the appointment and training of officials began only after the President issued a Writ of Election, the legal document that sets the election process in motion.

ELD, which prepares and organises the public service to conduct elections in Singapore, did not respond to TODAY’s queries sent on Thursday (April 7).

But it has maintained in the past that it selects and trains public officers “on an ongoing basis” to perform election duties during an election.

Election officials are assigned one of several roles, mainly as assistant returning officers, presiding officers and counting assistants. 

They are tasked with overseeing the voting process at polling stations, usually located within schools, community centres or void decks.