Voting at nursing homes and by post during PE2023

The Elections Department introduced two new ways of voting in the 2023 Presidential Election – special polling stations at nursing homes and voting by postal ballot for overseas voters. Both of these innovations represented significant departures from the Government’s traditional stance that voters must present themselves in person at designated polling stations to be allowed to vote. I volunteered as a polling agent and counting agent for Mr Tan Kin Lian and observed the conduct of the polls at one of the nursing homes, and the counting of votes from nursing homes on polling day. I also observed the counting of overseas votes including postal votes eleven days later.

Voting for nursing home residents

Special polling stations were set up at 31 nursing homes to facilitate voting by about 4,000 nursing home residents, and I observed the voting process as a polling agent at one of these homes, Ren Ci (Ang Mo Kio). About 200 residents were eligible to vote at this nursing home. Based on the copy of the electoral register provided to me as a polling agent, these residents were from 28 out of the 31 constituencies in Singapore.

For residents who were able to walk or get around on a wheelchair, the process was very similar to that in an regular polling station, except that the residents voted in a small polling station that had been set up in the function room of the nursing home. Many of the residents did require some level of assistance from nursing home staff.

About one-fifth or 40 of the voters were bedridden and the very special aspect of a “special polling station” was that the polling booth went to them, and they could vote from their beds. According to the Elections Department(ELD), this was an evolution of the process that had been used during the Covid pandemic to allow voters under Stay Home Notice to vote in the 2020 General Election. A team of Presiding Officers (POs) and nursing home staff went bed-to-bed to deliver ballot papers to bedridden residents so that they could vote from their beds.

ELD must be applauded for its effort to make it possible for elderly Singaporeans with limited mobility to excercise their civic right and duty to vote. Unfortunately, I have grave concerns as to whether the voters were fully aware of what they were doing. Even among voters who were able to walk or get around in a wheelchair, I would estimate that 10-20% were not fully aware that they were voting in an election or of who they were voting for. Among the bed-ridden patients, my estimate was that at least three-quarters of the patients were not fully aware of what was happening around them.

ELD was aware of this issue, and when it first proposed polling in nursing homes, it said it would ”align the approach to handle nursing home voters who may lack the mental capacity to vote with the current approach adopted at regular polling stations. For example, the voter will not be issued a ballot paper if he does not respond to the election official’s repeated requests for his identification document and poll card.”

Unfortunately, this may not be sufficient in a nursing home setting. In a regular polling station, there is already some selection in that a voter has to be reasonably aware to even be able to present himself at a polling station. When the polling booth goes to a voter’s bed, however, that pre-selection does not take place. According to ELD, nursing homes assessed the mental capacity of patients before putting their names on the list of voters eligible to vote. Yet many of the voters who had been pre-selected by the nursing homes were not allowed to vote because they were unable to identify themselves when asked to do so by Presiding Officers(POs). And even among those who were given ballot papers, about 15% were unable to mark their ballot papers properly so their votes ended up being rejected during counting.

Just as in regular polling stations, POs are permitted to assist voters in marking their ballot papers. Unfortunately, given the poor mental and physical health of many of the patients, and the resulting difficulties in communication, I am not fully convinced that all the votes recorded fully represented the deliberate choices of the voters.

Counting of votes from nursing homes

Votes from all 31 of the nursing home polling stations were counted at a single counting centre, New Town Secondary School (NTSS), following the close of polls on polling day. The counting process was identical to that in a regular counting centre, except that ballots from 15 or 16 nursing homes across Singapore were mixed together at each counting table before counting. This is in contrast to the procedure at regular counting centres where typically only balllots from a single polling district are mixed together on one counting table. Overall results from all of the nursing homes are shown in Table 1.

	Ng Kok Song	Tharman	Tan Kin Lian	Total Valid Votes
Votes received	659	1,486	530	3,157
Percentage of Valid Votes	24.6%	55.6%	19.8%	100%

Table 1 – Aggregated results from special polling stations at nursing homes in 2023 Presidential Election

Mr Tharman’s vote share was significant lower than his national average of 70.4% and even lower than the 59.3% he received at one regular polling station in Hougang. It is possible that this genuinely reflects his support among nursing home residents, but I am unable to exclude the possibility that this result was due to a large proportion of the nursing home residents picking a choice at random.

High proportion of spoilt votes

	Valid Votes	Rejected votes	Total Votes Cast	Rejected votes/ Total Votes Cast
Special Polling Stations (nursing homes)	2,675	482	3,157	15.3%
Regular polling stations in Singapore	2,478,085	49,670	2,527,755	2.0%

Table 2 – Comparison of votes rejected in special polling stations and regular polling stations. The proportion of rejected votes (“spoilt votes”) was substantially higher in special polling stations (nursing homes) compared to that in regular polling stations in Singapore (i.e. excluding overseas and postal votes)

This hypthesis is supported by the very high percentage of rejected votes or “spoilt votes” from the special polling stations – 15.3% compared to only 2% in regular polling stations (see Table 2). In my experience as a counting agent in past elections, the great majority of spoilt votes appeared to have been deliberately spoilt (e.g., X drawn in between the boxes, multiple X’s marked, or obscenities written on the ballot paper) so that they would not be counted. During the counting of votes from special polling stations in 2023, however, I observed that almost all the rejected votes appeared to have come from voters who were genuinely unable to mark the ballot papers correctly.

X-stamps were provided to the nursing home voters but the stamps were often placed randomly all over the ballot paper, and multiple stamps were often made on the same ballot paper. Pens were also provided for voters who had difficulty holding the stamps, but the pen marks were also poorly formed and not interpretable in many cases. My conclusion, unfortunately, is that a signficant proportion of the nursing home voters were not able to make a conscious choice as to who to vote for, and even if they did, they were unable to clearly indicate their choice on the ballot paper.

In special polling stations, just as in regular polling stations, POs were permited to assist voters in marking the ballot paper if asked to do so. Unfortunately, my observation on polling day was that many of the nursing home residents were unable to speak or to be understood by the POs due to their poor state of health. The POs certainly tried their best, in multiple languages and Chinese dialects, but despite the POs best efforts, I have grave reservations as whether all the marked ballots accurately represented the residents’ choices, and whether many of the residents were even aware of what was going on.

High incidence of nursing home residents with lack of mental capacity

Prior to polling day, the nursing homes put forward the names of residents who they assessed as being able to participate in polling. On polling day itself, POs made another assesment of the residents’ mental capacity by asking them to confirm their name and identity card number before issuing a ballot paper. Despite the pre-selection, turnout at special polling stations was only 77% compared to the national average of 94%. The most likely causes of the low turnout were that the resident’s health deteriorated before polling day, or the PO assessed on polling day itself that the resident did not have the mental capacity to vote.

	Valid votes	Votes cast	Eligible voters	Turnout (%)	Valid Votes/ Eligible voters(%)
Special polling stations (nursing homes)	2,675	3,157	4,087	77%	66%
Regular polling stations	2,478,085	2,527,755	2,698,671	94%	92%

Table 3 – Comparison of voter turnout in nursing homes and regular polling stations. Turnout (Votes cast/Eligible voters) and yield of valid votes (i.e., excluding spoilt votes) were significantly lower in special polling stations (nursing homes) than in regular polling stations.

After excluding rejected votes (spoilt votes), only 2,675 valid votes (or 66%) were received out of 4,087 eligible voters in special polling stations. This is significantly lower than the corresponding figure of 92% for regular polling stations becase of the high proportion of spoilt votes and the low turnout for nursing home residents.

Eighteen elections officials were present at the special polling station that I observed, assisted by about half as many nursing home staff. Given that there were 31 special polling stations altogether, I estimate that about 560 elections officials were required for all the nursing home polling stations. In addition, about another 30 elections officials were deployed for the counting of votes. All in, about 1 elections official was required for every 4.5 valid nursing home votes. In comparison, only one elections official was required for every 70 votes accepted in the nation as a whole.

	Valid Votes	Estimated number of election officials	Valid Votes/ Elections official
Special polling station (nursing home)	2,675	590	4.5
Overall Total	2,484,481	36,000	69.0

Table 4 – Number of elections officials required per valid vote counted in nursing homes compared to that in Singapore as a whole. Fifteen times as many elections officials per valid vote were required to administer special polling stations in nursing homes compared to regular polling stations.

ELD must re-examine voting at nursing homes

In a reply to a Parliamentary Question by NCMP Hazel Poa, ELD acknowledged that “election officials did face challenges including managing voters who may lack the mental capacity to vote” during voting at nursing homes. I concur with that assessment, and I urge ELD to re-examine the pros and cons of having special polling stations at all. At the very least, ELD must reconsider the value of having mobile polling stations going to residents’ bedsides.

As described above, I had serious doubts as to the mental capacity of many of the nursing home residents who voted in the 2023 election. In particular, I estimate that at least 75% of the bedridden voters did not have the mental or physical capacity to vote. While ELD tried to overcome the physical barriers by allowing POs to mark ballot papers on behalf of residents who were unable to do so themselves, I am not completely convinced that the residents were able to communicate their intentions to the POs properly.

Risk of a disputed election

In the 2023 Presidential Election, Mr Tharman beat the next highest candidate, Mr Ng Kok Song, by over 1.3 million votes so the impact of votes from special polling stations was negligible. In 2011, however, only 7,832 votes separated Mr Tony Tan from Mr Tan Cheng Bock. In other words, it would have only taken 3,691 voters to have shifted their vote from Mr Tony Tan to Mr Tan Cheng Bock for the outcome of the election to have been different. If we ever had such close elections again, any doubts over four-thousand-odd votes from nursing homes would raise questons over the results of the election. There may even be legal challenges to invalidate the election reminiscent of the legal battle over “hanging chads” in the 2000 Presidential Election in the USA. To prevent anything similar happening in Singapore, I suggest that ELD,

1. Reconsider the use of mobile polling stations. The manpower and other resources required to conduct mobile polling is extremely high when viewed against the number of valid votes that are eventually accepted from bedridden voters. It is also difficult for candidates’ counting agents to observe mobile polling even though mobile polling is the highest-risk area with regard to the mental capacity of voters and the conduct of polling.
2. Tighten the criteria used to pre-select residents for inclusion in the electoral register for special polling stations. Even among the residents who were mobile enough to be brought to special polling stations on the nursing home premises, I estimated that at least 10% did not have the mental capacity to vote. About three-quarters of the bedridden voters also did not have the capacity to vote. While these voters would not receive ballot papers if POs determine on the spot that they lack the mental capacity to vote, it is a strain on the nursing home and on elections officials to have to make accomodations for these residents even though there is a high chance that they may not be able to vote at all, or that their ballot may eventually be rejected.
3. Re-examine the costs and benefits of special polling stations. Fifteen times as many elections officials were required at special polling stations than regular polling stations for every vote that was eventually accepted. It may be more cost-effective for the Government to consider other means of giving nursing home residents the chance to vote. For example, the Government could consider paying for transport and staff to bring nursing home residents who are capable of voting to regular polling stations than it is for ELD to set up 31 polling stations and deploy almost 600 elections officials for less than 2,700 valid votes.

Counting of overseas votes and postal votes

Voting by post was introduced in the 2023 presidential election to make it more convenient for overseas Singaporeans to vote, compared to having to make their way to one of only a handful of overseas missions to cast their vote in person. Ten days were given for overseas ballot boxes and postal ballots to reach ELD, and counting of both overseas votes and postal votes was conducted on 12 September 2023.

The procedure for counting of ballots from overseas polling stations was similar to that for ballots from regular polling stations in Singapore, and all the overseas ballots were mixed together and counted on one counting table. As shown in Table 5, the 76.2% vote for Mr Tharman was above the national average of 70.4 % and the incidence of rejected ballots (spoilt votes) was almost the same as that for ballots cast in Singapore (see Table 2).

	Ng Kok Song (a)	Tharman (b)	Tan Kin Lian (c)	Valid Votes (a+b+c) = (d)	Rejected (spoilt votes) (e)	Votes cast (d + e) = (f)
In-person votes at overseas missions	409	1832	183	2424	30	2454
Percentage of valid votes	16.0%	76.2%	7.8%	100%
Percentage of votes cast				97.9%	2.1%	100%

Table 5 – Results from in-person voting at overseas polling stations

The results from the postal ballots were even more in Mr. Tharman’s favour, with him gaining 77.3% of the vote. However, the proportion of spoilt votes was higher, at 3.6% or 1.75 times the proportion of spoilt votes in the country as a whole.

	Ng Kok Song (a)	Tharman (b)	Tan Kin Lian (c)	Valid Votes (a+b+c) = (d)	Rejected (spoilt votes) (e)	Votes cast (d + e) = (f)
Postal votes	186	1002	109	1297	48	1345
Percentage of valid votes	14.3%	77.3%	8.4%	100%
Percentage of votes cast				96.4%	3.6%	100%

Table 6 – Results from postal voting. The percentage of spoilt votes was significantly higher than the 2.0% from regular polling

One of the reasons for the higher number of spoilt votes is that section 33(1)(c) of the Presidential Elections Act,

33.—(1)  The Returning Officer must reject as invalid the following ballot papers only ….

(c) any ballot paper on which anything is written or marked by which the voter can be identified except the printed number on the back;

Presidential Elections Act

requires that any ballots where the voter could be identified must be rejected. Some voters had signed their names on the face of the ballot paper, so those ballot papers had to be rejected. Some voters had printed their ballot papers double-sided with the return label on the other side, but since the return label included a QR code identifying the voter, these ballot papers also had to be rejected.

ELD’s instructions to postal voters do specifically mention that the ballot paper and return envelope should be printed on separate sheets of paper, but they do not emphasise that the vote would not be counted at all if they are printed double-sided on the same sheet of paper

The bigger concern with the postal ballots was that 41% were disallowed even though they had reached ELD on or before the September 11 deadline.

	Valid votes	Postal ballots accepted	Postal ballots disallowed	Postal ballots received by Sept 11	Registered postal voters
Postal votes	1,297	1,345	918	2,263	3,432
Percentage of postal ballots received	57.3%	59.4%	40.6%	100%
Percentage of registered postal voters	37.8%	39.2%	26.7%	65.9%	100%

Table 7 – Disposition of postal ballots.

ELD has told the Straits Times that the postal ballots were disallowed because the “return envelopes were found torn, unsealed or opened, or had absent, faint, illegible or late postmarks” even though they had arrived on time. From what I observed as a counting agent, problems with the postmark were the biggest cause leading to rejection.

Postal voters could download postal ballots starting the day after nomination day and were required to post their ballots by the eve of polling day so any postal ballots which were received by ELD on or before August 31 would have been allowed. For postal ballots received between September 1 and September 11, ELD would examine the postmark to determine whether the return envelope was posted on time. The return envelope provided to voters to download was a business reply envelope but many countries do not routinely postmark business-reply envelopes, and even for those which had been postmarked, the date was often not clear so ELD could not accept them if they were received after polling day. Some voters went to the expense of returning their ballots by courier service or express mail. Unfortunately, because the official ELD return envelope was enclosed inside another envelope provided by the courier service, those return envelopes would also be disallowed because they were not postmarked.

The problem with postal ballots being rejected because of missing postmarks is not unique to Singapore and even if voters affix postage stamps to the return envelopes as advised by ELD, there is no guarantee that the stamps would be postmarked legibly or at all.

Apart from these reasons, some postal ballots were also disallowed because the signature on the outside of the return envelope did not match the signature that the voter had uploaded to the ELD website when he or she registered as a postal voter. Some ballots were also rejected because two ballot papers were found inside the same return envelope.

Turnout of overseas electors

	Overseas votes cast	Registered overseas electors	Turnout
2023 Presidential Election (postal)	1345	3432	39.2%
2023 Presidential Election (in-person)	2454	3217	76.3%
2023 Presidential Election (postal + in-person)	3799	6649	57.1%
2020 General Election	4794	6570	73.0%
2015 General Election	3415	4868	70.2%
2011 Presidential Election	3375	5504	61.3%
2011 General Election	2683	3453	77.7%
2006 General Election	335	1017	32.9%

Table 8 – Turnout of overseas electors, 2006-2023

When measured as the number of votes cast as a proportion of registered voters, the turnout for overseas polling in 2023 was dismal at 57% – the lowest since 2011. Only 3,799 overseas votes (including spoilt votes) were eventually accepted for counting, fewer than the 4,794 overseas votes accepted in 2020 when overseas polling was conducted in the midst of Covid restrictions around the world. This may have been because the election was a presidential election and some potential voters may have seen it was a lower stakes election than a general election. In 2011, the presidential election also had a lower turnout percentage than the general election which had been held just three months earlier.

The bigger factor, however, was the large number of postal ballots which either arrived late or were disallowed for postmark and other reasons. Less than 40% of registered postal voters eventually submitted postal ballots which were accepted and counted. If all of the 2,997 postal ballots which had been downloaded were eventually accepted and counted, the turnout for overseas voters including postal voters would have been 5,451 or a very credible 82% of registered overseas voters.

PE2023 Voting Patterns Across Singapore

Former Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam was elected President of Singapore in a landslide election on 2 September 2023. Mr Tharman was the clear favorite going into the election and was widely expected to do well, especially in the Western part of Singapore, where he had received 75%-80% of the vote in his Jurong Group Representation Constituency (GRC) in two consecutive general elections in 2015 and 2020. Mr Tharman eventually received 70.4% of the nation-wide vote but following its usual practice, the Elections Department did not release any breakdown of the results by constituency or region within Singapore.

Counting of votes has been decentralized since the first Presidential Election in 1993. In last year’s election, there were 214 counting centres, each of which had between three to seven counting places, and with each counting place roughly corresponding to a polling district. As candidates are permitted to appoint counting agents at each counting place, it is possible for them to observe the voting patterns in different parts of Singapore. Unfortunately, the Elections Department does not officially publish the breakdown and up till now, no candidates in Parliamentary or Presidential Elections have released the breakdowns themselves.

In the 2023 Presidential Election, however, Mr Tan Kin Lian recruited over 500 volunteer polling agents and counting agents, and graciously aceded to a request from Gutzy.Asia to allow the release of detailed counting results collected by his counting agents. This stand is in stark contrast to the caginess shown by other political candidates towards revealing their party’s perfomance in different areas within their constituencies.

Some of this reticence could be due to the misperception that disclosing precinct-level results is prohibited by law. As early as 1997, however, then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told journalists,

“Everyone knows which area voted for Mr Ong Teng Cheong, which area had support for Chua Kim Yeow, because counting agents were there. Everybody knows…

“Each party – Workers’ Party, People’s Action Party – will have counting agents at the counting station. It is not something secret, which the PAP knows and the other side does not. It is transparent, it is clear as daylight. If a counting agent is alert when votes are counted, they will know how each precinct votes”

Chua Mui Hoong, PM: Precincts with greater support get upgraded first, The Straits Times, 1 January 1997

It is unfortunate that thirty years after vote counting was decentralized in Singapore elections, the Elections Department still does not publish polling district-level results as a matter of course, and that all political parties do not reveal this information either. Mr Tan’s willingneess to share the vote counts collected by his team is a big step forward for political transparency in Singapore, and the volunteers who stepped forward to serve under Mr Tan’s banner have also done a great service for Singapore by contributing to demystifying the electoral process and to breaking down the taboos against political participation.

Mr Tan’s volunteers were spread out across 137 counting centres and managed to obtain the voting results at 563 counting places (each counting centre had between three to seven counting places). This constituted 61% of the total number of counting centres (214) and 64% of the number of counting places (921). Despite the lack of complete coverage, the results collected by Mr Tan’s counting agents were very close to the actual results for the whole of Singapore. Mr Tharman’s vote share was 70.3% in the sample compared to 70.4% in the official results.

Vote share	Ng Kok Song	Tharman Shanmugaratnam	Tan Kin Lian
Based on sample collected by TKL’s counting agents	15.7%	70.3%	14.0%
Official results for whole of Singapore (excluding nursing homes and overseas votes)	15.7%	70.4%	13.9%

Table 1 – Comparison of results for sample collected and official results

Anecdotally, Mr Tharman was believed to have done well in the western part of Singapore, and this was proven in the sample collected by Mr Tan’s counting agents. Mr Tharman received as much as 89% of the vote in Taman Jurong (JR23 and JR30 polling districts). The figure below shows the vote share received by Mr Tharman, with red indicating a high vote percentage and yellow a lower percentage. Even in Hougang where he received his lowest vote share, he still received close to 60% of the vote.

Figure 1 – Vote share of Mr Tharman in the Presidential Election 2023. Data is plotted by location of polling station as that is representative of the geographical distribution of population. Polling stations for which data was not available are shown in grey. The PAP’s vote share in the 2020 general election is shown in the background, with darker shades representing higher PAP vote shares.

Mr Tharman received close to 75% of the vote in Jurong GRC in the 2020 general election, so it is not suprising that he is popular there, but it appears that his popularity extends to other areas in the West as well, including Choa Chu Kang and West Coast GRC. Conversely, he did relatively poorly in Aljunied GRC and Hougang which have both been in the Workers’ Party’s hands for over a decade. Of course, even in those Worker’s Party strongholds, Mr Tharman still received an average of 65% of the vote, demonstrating his appeal to a broad swathe of the electorate.

Given Tharman’s dominance in this election, Mr Ng and Mr Tan were effectively left to fight over the 30% of the voters who did not vote for Mr Tharman. In the end, Mr Ng came out ahead of Mr Tan by just 1.8%. No clear pattern was observed in the percentage vote shares for Mr Ng and Mr Tan (Figure 2 and 3 respectively).

Figure 2 – Vote share for Ng Kok Song

Figure 3 – Vote share for Tan Kin Lian

Similarly, there was no clear pattern in the distribution of spoilt votes (rejected ballots) even though the actual percentage of spolit ballots at each counting place varied from 0.6% to 3.7%.

Figure 4 – Percentage of spoilt ballots. Data is plotted by location of polling station as that is representative of the geographical distribution of population. Polling stations for which data was not available are shown in grey. The PAP’s vote share in the 2020 general election is shown in the background, with darker shades representing higher PAP vote shares.

Data Sources

The key goal for the volunteer effort was to promote transparency in the electoral process in Singapore and all the counting data collected is being released to the public domain in support of this goal.

The file “Polling Data v1.0.xslx” contains the vote counts by polling district collected by the counting agents. In some cases, only the counting centre but not the polling district was reported. In those cases, the total votes for the counting centre would be divided equally among all the polling stations which were being counted at the counting centre. Note that there were insufficient counting agents to cover all counting places, so we only have results for 563 out of 921 counting places. In addition, please note that these data are not official results and were collected by volunteers. Some of the results may have been misreported. Please email the author at PE2023@ngiam.net if you have data for any other counting centres or corrections to the data presented. 

polling-data-v1.0Download

Generally, each counting place corresponds to one polling district. Instead of plotting the results by polling district for this article, results were plotted by the location of the polling stations because polling stations are generally sited close to residents’ homes and this gives a better representation of the spatial distribution of population in Singapore. Some polling districts have two polling stations. In such cases, the vote counts for the polling district were simply split equally between the two polling stations.

results-by-ps-v1.0Download

The Elections Department published a list of polling station addresses shortly before the election. These addresses were geocoded and vote shares plotted using Felt. The file “Polling Stations v1.0.x” contains a list of polling stations and their corresponding polling district and counting place.

polling-statons-v1.0Download

Privacy laws applied to Government at last

Well, OK, we haven’t really seen the details yet, and we already know that there will be exceptions, and that it will be inherently time-limited because TraceTogether is supposed to go away when Covid comes under control. But the fact that the Government was forced to give in to calls for legal protection of contact tracing data is a big step forward for Singapore.

The Government has already announced that the legislation will be introduced under a Certificate of Urgency meaning that the First, Second and Third Readings of the Bill will be on the same day. This is unavoidable as it is necessary to restore public trust in SafeEntry/TraceTogether as soon as possible but it also means that there will be even less opportunity than usual to examine the Bill before it becomes law. Hopefully, the Government will release drafts of the Bill a reasonable time before it is introduced, rather than its usual practice of only releasing the text of a Bill at its First Reading, which in this case might be the same day that the Bill becomes law. Some things that we should watch out for:

What will be protected ?

The SNDGO press release mentioned “digital contact tracing solutions, which comprise the TraceTogether Programme and the SafeEntry Programme” so both platforms will likely be included. But what about contact tracing information obtained by non-digital means such as interviews ? A 65-year-old woman was recently sentenced to five month jail for trying to conceal her meetings with a male friend from MOH contact tracers. Would patients and close contacts be more forthcoming with contact tracers if they could be assured that anything they say to contact tracers would be kept confidential under force of law and would only used for controlling disease ?

As a side note, while looking at the legislative history of the Infectious Diseases Act, I discovered that healthcare professionals are prohibited, with some exceptions, from disclosing that a person is HIV positive. Most of those exceptions are related to the treatement or prevention of AIDS, but one of the exceptions is disclosure to a police officer under the Criminal Procedure Code. The exception was added in 2008 but no explanation was given in Parliament as to why it was necessary. It would be useful for an MP to ask for clarification from the government whether non-digital information provided to contact tracers can be used for any purpose besides disease control.

How serious is a “serious crime” ?

The Progress Singapore Party (PSP) has issued a statement saying that contact tracing data should only be used for “fighting the pandemic and nothing else”. I am sympathetic to that view and look forward to PSP Non-Constituency Members of Parliament (NCMPs) Leong Mun Wai and Hazel Poa arguing that position in parliament. Pragmatically speaking, though, it would be very hard to legislate such a purist position even though other jurisdictions such as Australia have done so.

TraceTogether is certainly not required to conduct contact tracing. MOH contact tracers were very successful durings SARS in 2003, and in the early stages of the Covid pandemic before electronic contact tracing was even introduced. All that digital contact tracing does is to reduce the manpower required and to make the process faster. Similarly, Police were investigating crimes long before SafeEntry/TraceTogether and will still be able to investigate crimes after the Covid pandemic is controlled and the government has promised that SafeEntry/TraceTogether will be stood down. The only reason to justify police access to contact tracing data is to speed up investigations where speed is critical (e.g. to prevent imminent likelihood of serious harm to somebody) or where this is no realistic way of obtaining the information (e.g. from a deceased person and where no other witnesses are known). Looking at the list of of crimes that SNDGO has released, most could be justified on the grounds that speed is critical and that access to the data could reduce the risk of serious harm. The exception is drug trafficking. While we can argue over the long-term harm that is caused by drug addiction, it is hard to see any scenario where speed would be so essential that it would be necessary to make use of TraceTogether information to prevent imminent harm to others. I would assume that “drug trafficking” is included in the list more to signal the Government’s “tough on drugs” stance than for actual public safety reasons.

1	Offences involving the use or possession of corrosive substances, offensive/ dangerous weapons, e.g. possession of firearms, armed robbery with the use of firearms.
2	Terrorism-related offences under the Terrorism (Suppression of Bombings) Act, Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act, and Terrorism (Suppression of Misuse of Radioactive Material).
3	Crimes against persons where the victim is seriously hurt or killed, e.g. murder, culpable homicide not amounting to murder, voluntarily causing grievous hurt (where the victim’s injury is of a life-threatening nature).
4	Drug trafficking offences that attract the death penalty.
5	Escape from legal custody where there is reasonable belief that the subject will cause imminent harm to others.
6	Kidnapping.
7	Serious sexual offences, e.g. rape, sexual assault by penetration.

Categories of Serious Offences to be Covered

“Clear and pressing need” and “Who decides ?”

This is perhaps the most important part of the proposed law that must be scrutinised if it is not possible to hold to the position of a total ban on the use of contact tracing data for anything other than prevention of infectious disease. The Government says that digital contact tracing data will only be accessed if there is a “clear and pressing need” for it, but what exactly is a “clear and pressing need” and who decides if a specific request passes that criteria.

At a minimum, I would expect that any procedure for accessing contact tracing data would require the investigating officer to clearly specify the reasons for the request, the specific individual whose data is being targeted and why there is a “clear and pressing need” for the data, and that the request should be approved by an independent reviewer such as a Judge in a similar manner to how search warrants are issued today.

It will be meaningless if the investigating officer himself gets to decides that there is a “clear and pressing need” for the data. Might as well not bother with the law in the first place. The present requirement in the Criminal Procedure Code of police officers above the rank of sergeant or inspector is a very low bar because even Police full-time National Servicemen (NSFs) are routinely appointed as sergeants or inspectors. If a teenaged Police NSF sergeant is not even old enough to vote, I don’t think he is old enough to decide that there is a “clear and pressing need” to access contact tracing data.

What does the government mean by “Clear and pressing need” ? Does that mean that there is a likelihood of serious harm to an individual if the request for acess is not granted ? If there are alternative means of obtaining the information that the police are looking for, there is no “pressing need” and the request should not be granted. I would also expect the police to have to demonstrate a reasonably clear idea of what they are looking for, rather than just going on a fishing expedition.

Data retention period

Both TraceTogether and SafeEntry claim that data is deleted for 25 days. That is relatively clear-cut in the case of TraceTogether data on your own app or token. That would be deleted if you do not test positive within that period. However, you may still leave some digital footprints for much longer than 25 days on other people’s TT or in the SE system.

For example, let’s say you briefly said “Hi” to Bob a week ago. Bob tests positive and MOH extracts his TT data. Under present guidelines, you would not be considered a close contact so MOH will not contact you. But would MOH decrypt your identifier anyway even though you only met Bob for one minute ? And once the identifier is decrypted, how long is the data kept if the subject is never identified as a close contact to be sent for Covid testing ?

Similarly, for SafeEntry, if no one who visits a particular location tests positive, MOH is supposed to delete the SafeEntry records for that location after 25 days. But let’s say Bob visited the supermarket a week before he tested positive and MOH extracts the list of everyone who visited the supermarket around the same time that Bob visited. But how long is “around the same time” ? Does that mean only a few hours or does it mean a few days before and after Bob’s visit ? How long do they keep the data if no-one else tests positive besides Bob ?

It’s not clear if the proposed legislation would also specify the data retention period (25 days) and most importantly, define the conditions under which data would be retained for longer than 25 days.

Ministerial exemptions

This is one of my pet peeves. Many laws in Singapore give the Minister substantial leeway to exempt people or classes of people from the law, or to unilaterally introduce subsidiary legislation that substantially changes requirements in an Act. An example of this was under the Personal Data Protection Act, where the Minister for Communications and Information announced exemptions that weakened key parts of the Do Not Call (DNC) registry just a week before the new law was to come into effect. Likewise, I would not be surprised if provisions that allow the Minister to unilaterally modify the privacy protections on contact tracing data are inserted into the legislation. Given that TraceTogether/SafeEntry are supposed to only be temporary anyway, it does not make sense for the Minister to be given that power. If the Government wishes to tighten any rules on accessing contact tracing data, they can do that with internal SOPs anyway. If they wish to loosen the rules, they should go back to Parliament since any changes to COVID regulations can be passed quickly under Certificates of Urgency.

Whiter than white ?

Alex Yam was appointed Mayor of the North West Community Development Council (CDC) in July 2020. However, he appears to still hold the position of Executive Director of PAP HQ. As the job of PAP HQ Executive Director was historically a full-time, paid position, this implies that the Government is subsidising the operating cost of the PAP by paying for Mr Yam’s salary while he continues to serve as a Party administrator.

At the time of his election to Parliament in 2011, Alex Yam was Head (Strategies & Planning/Youth Lab) of Young NTUC but left that job for the the position of Executive Director of the People’s Action Party (PAP) headquarters. The role of Executive Director has been described as “full-time” in the PAP newsletter, Petir, and Yam has not been reported as holding any other job since leaving NTUC, so we can infer that Executive Director of PAP HQ was a paid full-time position and that Yam was an employee of the PAP between 2013 and 2020.

Is Yam still serving as Executive Director of PAP HQ after his appointment as Mayor ? If so, how is that different from a political office-holder working for a private company while holding political office ? As of 30 December 2020, Yam still lists “Executive Director at PAP” as his occupation on his Facebook page. Admittedly, this could just be a sign that he did not update his web presence after getting re-elected so I wrote to him twice at his PA email address but did not receive any response.

As of 30 December, 2020, Alex Yam’s Facebook page still showed “Executive Director” of PAP HQ as his occupation.

When Yam was appointed as Deputy Executive Director in 2012, the PAP issued a press statement announcing his appointment and published a feature article in its Party organ, Petir, when Yam succeeded Pearce Lau Ping Sum as Executive Director in 2013. Given that the PAP has not made any announcements on replacing Yam as Executive Director, we can infer that he continues to serve in that capacity. The significance of that is that I am quite sure the PAP would not continue to pay Yam his Executive Director salary, and the Government would not allow him to be paid by the PAP in addition to the $660,000/yr he receives as Mayor. But this means that the taxpayer is subsidising the PAP by paying for the salary of its Executive Director.

Mayors who multi-task

Over the last five years, three Mayors – Low Yen Ling, Teo Ser Luck and Maliki Osman – have held other political appointments as Parliamentary Secretaries or Ministers of State at the same time that they served as Mayors. Political appointment holders often hold multiple portfolios in Singapore so this is not unusual.

The case of Desmond Choo is more interesting because he is Assistant Secretary General of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) in addition to being Mayor of the North-East District. This would raise eyebrows in many other democracies because of the risk of conflict of interest when a political office-holder also holds office in a trade union at the same time. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Ministerial Code states that Ministers “should take no active part in the conduct of union affairs, should give up any office they may hold in a union and should receive no remuneration from a union.” Notwithstanding the close relationship between the Labour Party and trade unions, the separation of union and government appointments has been respected even when the Labour Party was in power. By contrast, every Secretary-General of the NTUC in the last forty years has been a Government Minister though current Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng had to leave Cabinet after losing his seat in Parliament. Despite Ng’s loss and questions that are now being raised publicly about the relationship between the Government, PAP and NTUC, two Senior Ministers of State, Koh Poh Koon and Heng Chee How remain in the NTUC as Deputy Secretaries-General.

There is a big difference between a political office-holder working for the NTUC and one working directly for the PAP, however. The Government can argue that Koh Poh Koon’s, Heng Chee How’s and Desmond Choo’s work for NTUC is for the benefit of all Singaporean workers but it is clear that Alex Yam’s work as Executive Director of PAP HQ is only for the Party’s benefit.

To be clear, I am not making any aspersions as to Alex Yam’s personal integrity. I am very sure he is only taking one salary, that of Mayor. The problem is that by paying Yam, the Government is subsidising the PAP by paying for the cost of its Executive Director. In the same way that it would not be acceptable for the Government to send civil servants to work for a private company without charging the company, it is not acceptable for the Government to be paying the salary of a political party administrator.

The PAP has never been shy about using State resources for political purposes – estate upgrading and even the People’s Association itself are just two examples that come to mind. In both those examples, however, the government can argue that public funds are being used to benefit the community as a whole. But by paying Alex Yam’s salary even as he continues to serve as a PAP administrator, the Government is indirectly paying for the PAP’s running costs. That represents an unacceptable blurring of the line between Party and State reminiscent of the dramatic failure of governance that allowed PAP Town Councils to sell their IT system to a shell company owned by the Party.

As I mentioned earlier, Alex Yam did not respond to my emails raising these concerns directly with him. It’s possible that my inferences are incorrect and that he no longer holds the position of Executive Director, or that the position of Executive Director was an unpaid position. If any of these assumptions are incorrect, my concerns are unfounded and there is nothing wrong with him continuing to volunteer his services as Executive Director even as he serves as Mayor.

The PAP needs to find another Executive Director

If Yam had been paid by the PAP as Executive Director between 2013 and 2020, however, then the PAP cannot retain him in that position now that he has been appointed as Mayor. Six months has been plenty of time for the Party to find another administrator and the earlier they hire and announce a new Executive Director, the better.

MARUAH Electoral Boundary Delimitation Position Paper

In brief,

• The delimitation process in Singapore is opaque and not subject to public scrutiny. Some boundaries appear to be arbitrary or designed to favour one party. This results in weaker community ties and cynicism towards the political process.
• Maruah urges the government to raise the level of impartiality, equality, representativeness, non-discrimination and transparency of the boundary delimitation process in Singapore

Slides from the press conference are here:

MARUAH Electoral Boundary Delimitation Powerpoint Presentation

and the position paper itself is at Maruah’s website. Maps of changes in electoral boundaries from 1991-2011 are in Annex 2 (with thanks to the people at http://www.singapore-elections.com).

Singapore’s DNC exemption is not a soft opt-in

The Personal Data Protection Comission (PDPC) has argued that the existing customer exemption was introduced to give consumers the choice of receiving promotional messages and also that other countries such as the UK had similar exemptions. These arguments are red herrings: Even without the exemption, individuals always had the choice of giving consent to receive promotional messages and the UK “soft opt-in” rules for existing customers require that individuals must be given a chance to opt out at the time their data was initially collected.

Had they wanted to, the PDPC could have implemented a “soft opt-in” in Singapore even without an exemption order. Considering that businesses had more than a year to prepare for the implementation of the DNC after the Act was passed, the PDPC could have encouraged businesses to make use of that window to get consent from their customers. Instead, the PDPC created a permanent exemption which inverts the basic premise of Data Protection that individuals have the right to control how their personal information is used. Instead of the default position being that businesses should not use a person’s data without permission, the default has been inverted such that the company has the right to send promotional messages until consent is withdrawn.

Granted, the fact is that most businesses did not prepare in advance and did not get express or implied consent to send marketing messages even to customers with whom they had an on-going relationship.  A hard stop once DNC kicked in may have been quite disruptive to many companies. Had a public consultation been held, I could have lived with a time-limited exemption under which businesses would be given a limited time, say one year, to get consent from their existing customers to send marketing messages. This would not be unduly onerous to businesses – If they claim to have an “ongoing relationship”, they should certainly be contacting that customer at least once a year anyway. Unfortunately, there was no public consultation so now we are stuck with a permanent exemption which subverts one of the basic principles of Data Protection.

Of the DNC, the White Paper and Our Singapore Conversation

Six MPs have submitted questions for Monday’s Parliament sitting regarding the implementation of the Do Not Call registry. Unfortunately, none of the questions directly address the fact that the government changed the regulations at the last minute without any public consultation. To recap, the government announced in 2011 that it would finally be introducing Data Protection legislation, some 22 years after the government first created a committee to study the issue. A Do Not Call (DNC) registry was to be included in the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and three rounds of public consultation were held before the Act was passed by parliament in 2012.  The DNC registry opened for registration on 2 Dec 2013, but one week before the DNC rules were due to come into effect on 2 Jan 2014, the government announced an exemption that would allow businesses to SMS and fax existing customers. Telemarketers cheered but individuals were shocked and dismayed by the sudden weakening of a long-anticipated law that Singaporeans had hoped would protect them from junk calls and messages.

We can argue over whether the exemption is in fact “pragmatic” and “reasonable” or similar to other country’s rules, but the fact is that the government changed the rules at the last minute, without warning and without any public consultation, in stark contrast to the far more open and transparent manner in which the PDPA and DNC rules were originally drafted. Three rounds of public consultation were held, and unless the commenter requested otherwise, all comments were published on the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), now Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), website.  It was very much the open, transparent, consultative approach to policy making associated with the Our Singapore Conversation (OSC) and which Singaporeans hoped to see more of.

Yet once the rubber hit the road, the government fell back to its old, familiar method of formulating and implementing public policy.  The government decided what was best for us behind closed doors and that was that. In other words, it’s the Population White Paper all over again.  Just as the government views us as economic digits in calculating its target population for Singapore, the PDPC refers to us as “consumers” rather than as “individuals”. But of course, to be “consumers”, we have to consume and companies have to have a way to sell to us.  The PDPC’s repeated claims that the exemption was made in the interests of consumers is at best paternalistic and at worst an attempt to turn black into white, just as they initially claimed that businesses never raised the issue of existing customers until after the close of public consultations. Ironically, one of the members of the PDPC had suggested that a public message board be created to take in ideas, views and comments as part of the National Conversation. In Arun Mahizhnan‘s words, “Such transparency will go a long way to pacify the widespread perception that the government is selective in its hearing and self-serving in its sharing. After decades of careful orchestration of what the public says or hears in public, the completely transparent modus operandi on the part of the government will be refreshing and reassuring.” He goes on to say, “If the government explains its rationale for selecting only certain ideas for further consideration clearly and carefully, the fallout should be manageable.”. While not completely open, the Data Protection public consultations held in 2011-2012 were fairly close to this ideal. In contrast, the process by which the existing customer exemption was created in 2013 was policy-reversal by fait accompli. The PDPC only grudgingly acknowledged there was even a policy reversal at all, let alone give a rationale for making the change. We most certainly were not given any chance to present counter-arguments against the exemption.

We have seen in 2013 two contrasting faces of the PAP. There was the PAP of the White Paper – arrogant, paternalistic, top-down – and the PAP of the OSC – open, consultative, touchy-feely.  Much as the DNC exemption is, on the scale of things, a storm in a teacup, we can again see both sides of the government. During the initial public consultations for the Data Protection Act, we saw the open, consultative PAP of the OSC but when the DNC exemption was inserted without prior warning, we saw again the old arrogant, paternalistic, top-down and secretive PAP . So which is the real PAP ? Come 2016, which PAP will be voting for ?

Share this:

Electoral Procedure: Sampling checks in the 2011 Presidential Election

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 https://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.

OBS, PA and Personal Data – Or Govt Privacy Fail

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]