EC completes postal ballot dispatch to expatriate voters

The Election Commission (EC) has completed sending postal ballots to 767,028 expatriate voters in 121 countries to enable them to vote in the upcoming 13th National Parliament Election and the referendum. 

EC sources said the process of dispatching postal ballots to expatriate voters began in phases on 20 December and was completed within nearly three weeks, covering all registered overseas voters. 

Assistant Postmaster General of the Airport Sorting Office Shamim Sohani told BSS that the Bangladesh Postal Department completed the dispatch of all postal ballots received from the EC to overseas destinations yesterday. 

"The ballots were sent through Biman Bangladesh Airlines, Emirates, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Saudia Airlines to ensure the fastest delivery," he added.

He said the ballots are expected to reach all destinations within a few days.

The large-scale 'Out of Country Voting' (OCV) operation was carried out through the combined efforts of the Election Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Bangladesh Postal Department, Civil Aviation Authority and the concerned airlines.

Salim Ahmad Khan, team leader of the 'OCV-SDI' project on expatriate voter registration, told BSS that ballots could not be sent to some addresses of registered expatriate voters as they did not provide correct addresses.

He also said that 761,141 voters have registered under the 'in-country postal voting' category within Bangladesh. "Dispatching ballots to them will begin after the allocation of election symbols on 21 January and the entire process of sending and receiving ballots within the country may take around seven days," he added.

Salim Ahmad Khan cautioned that maintaining the secrecy of postal ballots is the responsibility of the voters themselves and violation of ballot secrecy could result in the blocking of the voter's National Identity Card (NID).

Country-wise statistics show that the highest number of ballots, 237,529, were sent to expatriate voters in Saudi Arabia. This was followed by Malaysia with 84,174 voters, Qatar with 75,869 voters and Oman with 56,063 voters.

According to EC data, a total of 1,533,683 voters registered through the 'Postal Vote BD' app for the 13th national parliament election and the referendum, including 772,542 expatriate voters and 761,141 in-country voters.