Thought I’d just take a basic/preliminary look at the rejected votes in this year’s General Elections because it’s something I’m curious about.
Based on data provided by ChannelNewsAsia:
- Total percentage of rejected votes as a proportion of votes cast: 2%
- Constituencies with lowest percentage of rejected votes:
- Hougang: 1.13%
- Aljunied: 1.34%
- Constituency with highest percentage of rejected votes: Ang Mo Kio (3.01%)
- Proportion of constituencies with rejected votes > national average of rejected votes: 16/26
What are some possible conclusions we can draw from this?
- Perhaps voters in Hougang and Aljunied took voting the most seriously because:
- These constituencies were the most hotly contested,
- These constituencies were contested by the Workers’ Party (reinforced by the fact that all except one of the constituencies contested by the Workers’ Party had <2% of votes rejected).
- Rejected votes in Ang Mo Kio: small proportion of voters who feel they don’t really have a choice, or perhaps are really clueless about how to vote.
- If it’s the latter, then we can tackle this problem in relation to the fourth statistic I found:
- Perhaps we need to be teaching our fellow citizens how to vote over the course of five years, instead of only doing so during the elections.
- There also needs to be instructions at polling booths, because the rejected votes make a mockery of the voting process.
This is a basic analysis of the data, so I welcome more scrutiny/thoughts on the subject.
