“We have not reached any resolution to express our thoughts about that matter,” Nutchapakorn Nummueng, a representative from the network, said yesterday

“We said initially that it was interesting that they would allow the public to check. But in detail, we are not really sure.”

Election Commissioner Somchai Srisuthiyakorn’s recent Facebook posts encouraged people to help monitor poll fraud and ballot counting, and report the results online using hashtag #ReferendumResult in Thai.

But, that was only Somchai’s personal view, not a resolution by the EC. Its legality was unclear as Somchai refused to give further interviews yesterday.

He had suggested that if any irregularities were found, people should capture them on photo or video and submit the evidence via the Election Commission’s “Pine-apple Eyes” application.

The EC has also allowed local organisations to help monitor the referendum, but unlike their foreign counterparts, they can only observe polling stations from the outside, not inside.

Busted ballot box

They include the Open Forum for Democracy Foundation (P-NET) and Alternative Media.

“The referendum law does not permit this, unlike general elections,” he said.

The EC has endorsed five foreign groups with 31 observers to monitor the August 7 voting – the Asian Network for Free Elections (Anfrel), the Asia Foundation and those from Timor-Leste, Bhutan and Nepal.

They will be on watch from August 5 to 8. They will get ID from the EC permitting them to go inside any polling station of their choice.

Somchai also introduced the new plastic ballot box to be used at 50,000 out of the 95,000 polling stations on Sunday. To demonstrate the strength of the box to the press, he dropped it on the carpeted floor, but it broke the fourth time.

Attempting to explain the breakage, he said the box would not normally be dropped so hard and he might have used too much force throwing it on the floor.