+ GE2006 | Polling Day

Its polling day today!

Polling opens at 8:00am and ends at 8:00pm today. We are casting our votes at our polling station in Poi Ching School. So I get the "bird's eye view" of the going-on from my bedroom window.

At 8:45am, the school was very much still empty, as people are still waking up, but much of it was due people waiting out the morning heavy rain.

At 9:45am, there were still very few people, but I could see cars start to fill-up the road behind my block. And about 10 minutes later, I could now see people with umbrellas scattered all over, converging to the school's main gate.

My wife and I cast our votes at about 11:00am - PAP or SDA party... X marks the spot on the ballot paper.

No major delays at all. The elderly and those on wheelchairs were given priority to cast their votes first. This is a thoughtful idea. The balloting went smoothly as expected.

We got to meet our neighbours as they queued behind us.

We also got to see PAP's Mah Bow Tan and his 4 other candidates coming into the polling area, observing the exercise.

They stayed there for less than 2 minutes before left the school. As they passed our queue, they gave everyone a nod and a smile.

With our polling card and our ID card, we were verified against a register and passed over to receive our ballot papers.

Our serial numbers and names were called out for the voting auditor to also verify our eligibility.

Our polling card serial number was written on the ballot tab before the ballot paper was detached off the tab and handed over to us to poll.

The ballots are thus traceable to the tabs as each ballot paper and its tab has a serial number. With our polling card serial numbers written on the tabs, it is no secret after all, but traceable if need be. Hopefully for "verification" purpose only.

Wify has left for her shop at 11:20am. I will be heading to my parents' place to bring them to their polling station in Marsiling.

The results will start to be announced starting 10pm tonight. My gut feeling is that there will not be any surprises specifically in my Tampines GRC - Group Representation Committee of 126,142 voters.

More to come later today.