Eight cases of suspicious vote-buying on Election Day were identified at a purpose-built police center that monitors election-related crime, a spokesman for the center said. So far, four suspects have already been charged with vote buying, said Lieutenant General Nitithorn Chintakanon, a spokesman for the election security center.
The police are still investigating to make sure these cases were not attempts by some candidates to blame their rivals. Nitithorn said the center received information about 23 cases of torn ballots, but most of them were unintentional because the ballots were torn by intoxicated voters or people suffering from dementia.
In one case, a voter stumbled and accidentally tore his ballot. In another case, a voter marked the wrong box, so he tore up his ballot to get a new one, not knowing that such an act was illegal, Nitithorn added. He also noted that the interrogations of the people who tore up the ballots did not reveal a single case of political motivation.
Two suspects were arrested for photographing ballots, and six people were detained for selling alcoholic beverages on election day. The center will be open until Wednesday. He oversees the counting of votes and the transport of ballot boxes to the Electoral Commission office in Bangkok.
