According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs( MFA ), more than 80 % of Thai nationals who are eligible to vote did so in advance of the general election on May 14.
According to Kanchana Patarachoke, director-general of the MFA’s Department of Information, between March 25 and April 9, 115, 139 individuals registered for enhanced voting abroad. 119, 313 people registered prior to the 2019 election, which is a decrease from that number.
According to reports, the majority of Thais who registered were in Australia, America, The United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany.
Based on local circumstances, each embassy and consulate has decided how to handle the vote in their particular country or region, such as by setting up on-site polling places or allowing votes to be mailed by mail.
Bags of ballots were sent to Thailand during the advanced voting period from April 28 – 30 by US embassies and consulates in Los Angeles and Washington, Savannakhet in Laos, Xian in China, Kathmandu in Nepal, Abuja in Nigeria, Kuwait, Karachi in Pakistan, Singapore, Penang and Kota Bharu in Malaysia, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and Cairo in Egypt.
According to Ms. Kanchana, as of Wednesday, more than 80 % of eligible Thais living abroad had exercised their right to vote at nearly all of the election locations.
In Thailand, all of the votes may be tallied. An Open Vehicle Monitoring System ( OVMS ) will be used to track them in order to make sure they arrive in the nation on time. A real-time schedule is also used to carry out send procedures.
However, some embassies and consulates that don’t have direct flights to Thailand will either take their ballot bags to an airport that does, or they will send them themselves.
According to Ms. Kanchana, government organizations have informed Thai voters who are casting their ballots by email that they can post their votes to embassies or consulates on their own to make sure they all arrive in Thailand on time.
She claimed that mailing votes could be hazardous because of telegraph system delays in some nations or because the senders did not write the target address plainly enough.