http://www.ngiam.net/NorthKorea2013/
Photos and notes from my trip to North Korea in March 2013 to conduct two seminars on Lean Production for a Women in Business workshop and on Inflation for Ministry of Finance officials. The workshops were organised by Choson Exchange, an NGO that aims to promote economic development in North Korea over the long-term through business and economic exchanges.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: North Korea
Got Milk? You Dont Need It – NYTimes.com.
Hmm… Skim milk has same calorie load as soda.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Guide for Counting Agents (ELD)
Looks like the Elections Department has released its’ Guide for Counting Agents in the Hougang by-election, and the sampling check for “the purpose of checking against the result of count for that counting place” remains in place. Seems fairly pointless to check “against the result of count” given that there’s no way to change what’s on the ballot papers even if the final results don’t agree with the sampling check.
The real question is whether the AROs will disclose the results of the validity check to Counting Agents at the time that it is carried out, and who receives the “sampling check” information after it is compiled by ELD HQ, but before the announcement of the vote counts at the counting centres.
http://www.eld.gov.sg/pdf/Guide%20for%20Counting%20Agents%20(Final).pdf
Background here:
http://stngiam.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/electoral-procedure-sampling-checks/
Filed under: Elections, General Elections, Presidential Election | Leave a Comment
Tags: counting agents, sampling check, validity check
Where Bears Roam Free: Lies and misrepresentation in Green Campaign.
The End is Nigh but Singapore’s Got Talons
In all honesty, I never order shark’s fin simply because I find it over-priced and I don’t get much utility from it. The way things are going, though, I might start ordering it simply to spite the anti-shark’s fin people. I am happy to see that there has been a stronger reaction against the anti-plastic bag campaign, possibly because Singaporeans have been raised out of their stupor by the anti-shark’s fin campaign.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
As recounted in my earlier posts, I served as a Counting Agent in both the General Election and Presidential Election last year. One of the pleasant surprises of the 2011 elections was the number of Singaporeans who stepped forward as volunteers to assist the different parties and candidates in campaigning and to serve as Polling Agents and Counting Agents in both elections. Polling agents are appointed by candidates to observe the polling process while Counting Agents observe the counting of ballot papers. Unfortunately, I think the smaller parties were overwhelmed by the response so the administration and training of their volunteers was less than ideal. Still, it is a good sign of the health of Singapore’s political development that so many did step forward to serve.
The Elections Department (ELD) also helped by publishing for the first time two guides for Polling Agents and Counting Agents. Unfortunately, these guides were only released three days before polling day so it was too late for the candidates to use them in their training sessions. Hopefully, the Elections Department will update these guides for future elections and release them earlier so that candidates, agents and voters will have a clearer understanding of the procedures and rules regarding the casting and counting of votes.
By and large, I think both elections went off smoothly and by the time of the Presidential Election, both elections officials and Counting Agents were already familiar with the procedures and in some cases, with each other, because they had met previously during the General Election. The Elected President is intended to be above party politics and I was pleased to find that at least in the counting centre that I was assigned to, there was a high level of co-operation between the Counting Agents representing all four of the candidates. Apart from Tony Tan, the other candidates did not manage to recruit enough Counting Agents to cover all the Counting Places. Nonetheless, Counting Agents for the other three candidates informally spread themselves out among the tables and held watching briefs for each other. In any case, there were few disagreements between the Counting Agents and Assistant Returning Officers (AROs) or among the Counting Agents over adjudication of ballots.
Counting Procedures
The counting procedures for both Parliamentary and Presidential Elections are substantially similar and ELD’s Guide for Counting Agents provides a good overview. One of the interesting features of the process is what ELD calls in its guide a “sampling check”
Sampling checks
5.16 During the counting process, the ARO will conduct a sampling check to obtain a sample of the possible electoral outcome for that counting place, for the purpose of checking against the result of count for that counting place.
What I observed was that after the ballot boxes were opened and the contents mixed together on the counting table, one of the counting assistants would randomly select 100 ballot papers and do a quick tally of the votes on that sample and then report the results to the Assistant Returning Officer in charge of that Counting Place. The results of the sampling check were not formally announced to those present but Counting Agents could observe the recording of the results by the AROs. As I mentioned earlier, there was very good co-operation and sharing of data between the Counting Agents representing all four candidates so I managed to collect the sampling check data for all the counting tables at our Counting Centre (Table 1).
| Table 1 – Sampling check results for Presidential Election, 27 August 2011 | |||||||
| Nanyang Junior College Counting Centre | |||||||
| Counting Place | Polling District | Polling Station | Tan Cheng Bock | Tan Jee Say | Tony Tan Keng Yam | Tan Kin Lian | |
| 1 | GK01 | MA27 | Nanyang JC | 33% | 25% | 36% | 6% |
| 2 | GK02 | MA24 | Braddell Heights CC (B) | 22% | 34% | 39% | 5% |
| 3 | GK03 | MA23 | Braddell Heights CC (A) | 30% | 28% | 38% | 4% |
| 4 | GK04 | MA22 | 419 Serangoon Central | 35% | 21% | 34% | 10% |
| 5 | GK05 | MA26 | 305 Serangoon Ave 2 | 21% | 32% | 43% | 4% |
| 6 | GK06 | MA25 | 240 Serangoon Ave 2 | 26% | 30% | 35% | 9% |
| Overall for Counting Centre | 27.8% | 28.3% | 37.5% | 6.3% | |||
| Sampling is conducted by taking a sample of 100 ballots at each Counting Place after mixing of ballot papers but before commencement of counting. The overall share for each candidate was computed by simply averaging the results for each polling district without adjusting for the different number of voters in each polling district. | |||||||
Tony Tan came out ahead in all the polling districts in the sampling check, just as he did in the final tally (Table 2) though there was some difference between the final result and the sampling check (Table 3).
| Table 2 – Actual results for Presidential Election 27 August 2011 | ||||||||
| Nanyang Junior College Counting Centre | ||||||||
| Counting Place | Polling District | Polling Station | Tan Cheng Bock | Tan Jee Say | Tony Tan Keng Yam | Tan Kin Lian | Total number of valid votes | |
| 1 | GK01 | MA27 | Nanyang JC | 34.1% | 26.6% | 34.0% | 5.3% | 3,237 |
| 2 | GK02 | MA24 | Braddell Heights CC (B) | 32.5% | 28.6% | 33.0% | 5.9% | 3,074 |
| 3 | GK03 | MA23 | Braddell Heights CC (A) | 31.5% | 28.7% | 34.8% | 5.1% | 3,198 |
| 4 | GK04 | MA22 | 419 Serangoon Central | 32.5% | 26.0% | 35.8% | 5.7% | 3,539 |
| 5 | GK05 | MA26 | 305 Serangoon Ave 2 | 33.5% | 25.3% | 36.4% | 4.9% | 2,946 |
| 6 | GK06 | MA25 | 240 Serangoon Ave 2 | 32.7% | 24.8% | 36.6% | 5.9% | 3,434 |
| Overall for Counting Centre | 32.8% | 26.6% | 35.1% | 5.5% | 19,428 | |||
| See http://stngiam.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/flash-results-micropolling-results-of-presidential-elections-2011/ for more polling-district level results. | ||||||||
| Table 3 – Difference between actual vote share and sampling check | ||||||||
| Nanyang Junior College Counting Centre | ||||||||
| Counting Place | Polling District | Polling Station | Tan Cheng Bock | Tan Jee Say | Tony Tan Keng Yam | Tan Kin Lian | ||
| 1 | GK01 | MA27 | Nanyang JC | 1.1% pt | 1.6% pt | -2.0% pt | -0.7% pt | |
| 2 | GK02 | MA24 | Braddell Heights CC (B) | 10.5% pt | -5.4% pt | -6.0% pt | 0.9% pt | |
| 3 | GK03 | MA23 | Braddell Heights CC (A) | 1.5% pt | 0.7% pt | -3.2% pt | 1.1% pt | |
| 4 | GK04 | MA22 | 419 Serangoon Central | -2.5% pt | 5.0% pt | 1.8% pt | -4.3% pt | |
| 5 | GK05 | MA26 | 305 Serangoon Ave 2 | 12.5% pt | -6.7% pt | -6.6% pt | 0.9% pt | |
| 6 | GK06 | MA25 | 240 Serangoon Ave 2 | 6.7% pt | -5.2% pt | 1.6% pt | -3.1% pt | |
| Overall for Counting Centre | 5.0% pt | -1.7% pt | -2.4% pt | -0.8% pt | ||||
| e.g, in polling district MA27, Tan Cheng Bock actually received 34.1% of the vote compared to 33% in the sampling check, a difference of 1.1 % points. | ||||||||
The sampling check is not specifically called out in the Presidential Elections Act or Parliamentary Elections Act though it does not appear to be prohibited either. I did not observe the counting assistants carrying out a sampling check during last May’s General Elections. However, I did observe the ARO at a different counting centre personally pick up a stack of ballots and scrutinize them very closely. When I asked him what he was doing at that time, he answered that he was checking the validity of the ballot papers. Possibly, he was referring to Section 50(1)(a) of the Parliamentary Elections Act under which ballot papers must bear an official authentication mark to be considered valid. Given the thoroughness of ELD’s pre-election preparations and the scrutiny of Presiding Officers and Polling Agents, not to mention voters, during polling, I find it very unlikely that any unauthenticated ballot papers could slip through. In any case, the ARO is required under Section 50 to check the validity of every ballot paper when it is counted so a validity check on a subset of the ballots appears to be superfluous.
Regardless, the validity check or sampling check cannot affect election results because they are only conducted after polls have closed. Conceivably, the sampling check could be construed as being a form of exit polling and while Section 78D of the Parliamentary Election Act prohibits the publication of exit poll results on polling day, this prohibition only applies while polling stations are open. Even if a sampling check were conducted during a Parliamentary Election and the results leaked out, there would not be any violation of the Act because polls would already have closed by the the time the sampling check is conducted.
Sampling check as predictor of election result
The ELD Guide for Counting Agents says that the purpose of the sampling check is to “obtain a sample of the possible electoral outcome for that counting place, for the purpose of checking against the result of count for that counting place.” This sentence is quite awkwardly constructed and doesn’t make a lot of sense since the the final vote tally will be the official result regardless of whether it agrees with the sampling check. Presumably, what they really meant to say was that the sampling check is used to predict the outcome of the election early in the counting process.
As can be seen in Tables 1 to 3, the sampling check predicted correctly that Tony Tan would come out on top at Nanyang Junior College, though his actual vote share was 2.4% lower than that in the sampling check. The sampling check result for Tan Cheng Bock in polling district MA24 stands out as it was 11 percentage points lower than his actual vote share. I estimate a slightly more than 1% chance of this occurring by chance, which is a low probability but not exceptionally low. Of course, it’s also quite possible that the Counting Agent at that table just made a mistake because the ARO did not officially announce the sampling checks results over the table.
For this election, analyzing the sampling check results is quite challenging because there were four candidates so the problem is a multiple comparison problem rather than the usual comparison of two proportions. In a normal two-horse race, we would just have to predict whether the votes for one candidate exceed 50% and that would tell us the outcome of the race. In this case, however, we would have had to predict the vote shares of at least two, perhaps three, candidates, but the vote shares of the candidates are not independently distributed, which makes the problem rather difficult. If any more statistically-inclined reader has a good method for estimating probability distributions for this type of problem, please contact me.
Four-way elections will hopefully remain rare in Singapore, so I present a simplified analysis of the sampling check in a standard two-way election instead. There were 782 polling stations in the last election and if 100 ballots are sampled from each one, there would be a total of 78,200 ballots in the sampling check for a nation-wide election such as the presidential election. We assume that each polling district has the same number of voters, and using the normal approximation to the binomial distribution, the 95% confidence interval for the sampling check is roughly ±0.4% points. If we don’t need to estimate the actual vote share and only need to know whether a candidate has won (i.e., received > 50% of the vote), we can be 95% confident that he has won if he receives over 50.3% of the votes in the sampling check (one-tailed test). For the elections officials, what counts perhaps is not who won but rather whether there would be a recount. To avoid a recount, the winning candidate must receive at least 51% of the final vote (2% winning margin over his opponent) so if the sampling check reveals that one candidate has scored at least 51.4% in the sample, the elections officials can be 99% certain that they would not have to stay overnight. In reality, the number of voters varies from about 2,000 to 3,500 per polling district and since voter turnout will be known by the close of polls, we could make some adjustments for polling district size and voter turnout to improve the accuracy of the forecast. Of course, there is no way to estimate the number of spoilt votes, which could affect the results, but I don’t think those would have a large effect in most circumstances.
Because the sample size is large in a presidential election, the forecast made by the sampling check is quite precise. In parliamentary elections, however, there may be as few as five polling districts in a single-member constituency (SMC) such as Potong Pasir so the sample would be smaller and the uncertainty in the sampling check larger. Assuming a sample of 500 out of a total of 15,870 valid votes in Potong Pasir, a candidate would have to receive at least 53.7% in the sampling check to be 95% certain of winning the election (one-tailed test). Hougang is larger and has nine polling districts with 23,000 voters. For that constituency, a candidate would have to poll at least 52.7% in the sampling check to be 95% certain of winning the election. Again, I’m assuming equal polling district sizes in these analyses but adjusting for polling district size and turnout would be more important in small constituencies.
Purpose of the sampling check
A rather obvious question is what ELD does with the sampling check data. As described above, one possible use of the sampling check is to predict whether recounts would be necessary and to prepare the elections officials accordingly. I do not know whether this was done during the presidential election, but I presume not, because I did not observe the elections officials at my counting centre start to make preparations for the recount until very late in the night. Since the sampling check takes place after the close of polls it cannot affect voter turnout and it cannot have any effect on the ballot papers which have already been poured out and mixed together on the counting table. The only possible effect that I can conceive is that if a candidate learns that the results are close in a particular counting centre, he could redeploy his more persuasive Counting Agents there in the hope of swaying the ARO into interpreting unclear ballots in a more favorable manner. This has less of an impact in Presidential Elections where every vote has the same weight regardless of location, but in a General Election, political parties may be able to use sampling check data to reposition Counting Agents from safer seats to more contested constituencies where they might be able to make a difference. Smaller parties in particular could benefit more from this information in that they could make more effective use of their smaller pool of volunteers whereas larger parties already have an excess of Counting Agents so have lesser need to redeploy them even in the event of a close fight. To ensure the appearance of impartiality, however, ELD should formally announce the results of the sampling check rather than leave it to Counting Agents to look over the shoulders of the AROs. While the AROs at my counting centre did not prevent the Counting Agents from jotting down the results of the sampling check, they did not explicitly announce the results in the same way that they announced the final vote count over the table.
On reflection, however, it is not really clear to me what purpose the sampling check serves. ELD does not appear to use the results to prepare its officials for recounts, and it does not officially share the results with candidates or media. Hopefully ELD would be able to explain the purpose and use of the sampling check when it prepares its Guides for Candidates and Counting Agents for the next election — whether General Election or by-election. While I can appreciate it if ELD has concerns that revealing sampling check results could raise temperatures in close elections, I also don’t think it is tenable for them to conduct a sampling check during the course of counting without being more open and transparent as to the procedure and the use of the data generated by the sampling check.
Filed under: Elections, General Elections, Presidential Election, Singapore | 1 Comment
Tags: sampling check, validity check
Looks like we’ll have to wait till late 2013 at the earliest for the Do Not Call registry to be set up, but in the meantime we can prevent our kids or ourselves from “accidentally” signing up for chargeable SMS services. Instructions for the three telcos below. Incidentally, shame on M1 for screwing its customers with a $10.70 charge for blocking premium rate service SMS. Yes, it’s the letter of IDA’s regulations but that also means that once a subscriber has blocked PRS, he will never want to unblock it even to try out one service because it’ll cost money to block PRS again after that.
To activate PRS barring service, simply dial *BLOCK (*25625).
This service is provided FREE for all SingTel customers.
To bar all PRS including StarHub Services
SMS <BARSTARHUBPRS> and send to 6757
SMS <BARPRS> and send to 6757
No charge for barring Premium Rate Services.
Prepaid customers can just dial #100*8*1# and barring is free. Postpaid customers have to call 1627 or activate barring online on M1′s customer portal. M1 is sticking to the letter of IDA’s regulations and only allowing one free activation of the barring service. If you block PRS, then unblock to try out one service, you will be charged $10.70 for blocking PRS again after that.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
‘That’s Our Job’: The Government Investigates Cellphone Wiretapping – The Atlantic.
2005 ? I must confess I didn’t keep up with the story back then. Archived for reference.
Filed under: Privacy | Leave a Comment
Archived for reference
9 Reasons Wired Readers Should Wear Tinfoil Hats | Threat Level | Wired.com.
Filed under: Privacy | Leave a Comment
My company recently decided to send its leadership team for a team-building activity organised by Outward Bound Singapore (OBS) and asked us to fill in OBS’ course registration form which contained the usual disclaimers but buried in the consent clause was this statement: “I also authorise the Outward Bound Singapore to disclose my personal information to its employees/agencies as it is necessary for official purposes in connection with the People’s Association (including PAssion Card) Programmes.”
Why the heck should I give my personal information to the People’s Association (PA) as a condition of taking part in an OBS programme ? A bit of background here: OBS is the licensee of Outward Bound International in Singapore and is operated by the PA. The PA is a government agency that was set up to to promote racial harmony and social cohesion. It does this through a network of Community Centres, so-called “grassroots organisations” and even a discount card programme, the PAssion Card referred to earlier.
In my last post, I speculated that the public sector would be excluded from Singapore’s Data Protection (DP) law and unfortunately I was proved correct when the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts (MICA) released its Consultation Paper on the proposed DP regime. According to MICA, the public sector will be excluded from the DP regime because “public sector rules accord similar levels of protections for personal data as the proposed DP law.”
Insofar as they apply to the private sector, MICA’s DP proposals do appear to be consistent with international norms such as the OECD Guidelines and APEC Privacy Framework. Among the principles that MICA has accepted is the principle of Consent, i.e., organisations must gain the consent of individuals before processing that person’s data. According to MICA’s Consultation Paper, “an organisation may not, as a condition of supplying a product or service, require an individual to consent to the collection, use or disclosure of personal data beyond what is necessary to provide the product or service.”
How can it be necessary for OBS to release my personal data to PA and the PAssion Card programme just to enroll me in a one-day team-building activity ? There was no check-off box for me to agree or disagree to disclosure of my data to third parties, just a single omnibus consent clause. The government has never revealed its internal rules for handling personal data but suffice to say, either OBS is not following the rules or the government’s rules do not in fact provide the same level of protection as the DP Act is intended to provide in the private sector. In any case, I struck off the part about disclosing data to PA and wrote in an additonal “NO DISCLOSURE TO PA” for good measure on the form. We shall see whether I start to receive promotional mailings or phone calls from PA anyway despite my admonition to OBS not to disclose my data to PA.
In an interview with the Straits Times, the former head of the PA, Mr Tan Boon Huat, admitted that grassroots leaders may be given access to the profiles of PAssion Card members. In the Singapore context, “grassroots leaders” refers to some 30,000 office-holders in grassroots organisations around Singapore. While grassroots members are officially volunteers, they have close ties to ruling party Members of Parliament and their children receive preferential admission to schools in their district. Mr. Tan says that grassroots leaders have to follow the same confidentiality rules as PA staff but the fact is that grassroots leaders are volunteers – there is no contractual relationship between the PA and grassroots members – hence whatever rules PA may have are not legally binding on the grassroots leaders. Furthermore, because there is no employer-employee relationship between the PA and grassroots volunteers, PA is not legally responsible for the actions of a grassroots leader. According to the PA’s website there are 1,023,258 PAssion Card members today.
Quite apart from this specific case, there is a broader problem with the government’s claim that its internal rules provide sufficient protection for personal data. The basic fact is that internal rules are not the same as legislation. They can be changed at any time and even if the government were to break its own rules, affected individuals would have no legal recourse. Internationally, in a survey of 78 countries in Privacy Laws and Business International Report, all but Malaysia and India either included the public sector in their DP Laws or had separate legislation for the public sector. The United States and Thailand do not have comprehensive privacy laws for their private sectors, but have privacy laws covering their public sectors. Singapore therefore seems to be out of step with international trends in excluding its public sector from DP legislation.
I am not optimistic that the government will change its mind for this first iteration of the DP Act. However, I expect that there will be enhancements to Singapore’s DP regime in the future, and we can continue to urge the government to extend coverage of DP legislation to the public sector in Singapore in the near future.
[Previously published at Zdnetasia's Tech Podium, http://www.zdnetasia.com/blogs/call-for-spore-data-protection-law-to-include-public-sector-62302750.htm]
Filed under: Privacy, Singapore | Leave a Comment
Tags: Data Protection, Passion Card, People's Association
