NINE hectic days of campaigning. Two prime-time national broadcasts. A live TV debate. Dozens of walkabouts across the island to meet as many people and shake as many hands as possible.

Everything culminates in Polling Day on Friday (Sep 1), where – for the first time in 12 years – Singaporeans will head to the polls to elect the country’s next president. Nearly 2.71 million eligible citizens – 2,709,455 of them, to be exact – will be at one of 1,264 polling stations to cast their ballots.

The names of three candidates – former GIC chief investment officer Ng Kok Song, former senior minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam and former NTUC Income chief executive Tan Kin Lian – are on the ballot paper, and one of these men will have his life changed forever when the results are announced.

All campaigning ended on Wednesday night, with the cooling-off period – from midnight on Thursday to the close of polling at 8 pm on Friday – kicking in to allow voters time to reflect on their decision before they stamp an “X” beside the candidate of their choice on their ballot paper.

Voting in Singapore’s elections is compulsory for everyone who is eligible. The Elections Department (ELD) said on its website that it is a “fundamental right of citizenship and a civic responsibility of citizens” to choose and elect their leaders in a democracy.

The voter turnout for the last election in Singapore – the general election held in July 2020 – was 95.81 per cent. For the 2011 presidential election – the last time a vote was conducted to elect the head of state – the turnout was 94.8 per cent.

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All the polling stations – located at schools, community centres, HDB void decks and elsewhere – will stay open for 12 hours, from 8 am to 8 pm. Voters can check the queue status at their designated polling station before turning up with their physical or electronic poll card, as well as their NRIC or passport.

In a first for a Singapore election, slightly over half of the 6,649 registered overseas voters – a total of 3,432 – will vote by post. The return envelope must be postmarked before Sep 1 and reach the Returning Officer in Singapore by Sep 11 to be accepted for counting. 

The rest of the overseas electors will do their duty at one of 10 overseas polling stations. These are located at the Singapore government’s high commissions, embassies or consulates in Beijing, Canberra, Dubai, Hong Kong, London, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai, Tokyo and Washington.

And in another first, the ELD is running a pilot programme that will see special polling stations set up at 31 nursing homes. This initiative, which will benefit 4,087 voters, comes after new laws were passed in Parliament in March this year to make voting easier for seniors in these nursing homes, given how some of them may have mobility issues.

Sample counts

After voting has ended, the ballot boxes will be sealed and transported to various counting centres. Before the official results are out, the ELD will first reveal the “sample count” results, which will give an early indication of the possible outcome.

This is the first time the results of a sample count will be publicly released for a presidential election, ever since the practice started at the 2015 general election.

They are meant to prevent unnecessary speculation and reliance on unofficial sources of information before all the votes are accounted for and the final results are announced. Sample counts have a 95 per cent chance of being within four percentage points of the actual count.

The votes from every polling station will be included in the sample count. At each counting centre, a random bundle of 100 ballot papers are picked out, and this is done in the presence of counting agents and the candidates themselves, if they are present.

The votes will be tallied, with weightage given according to the number of votes cast at each polling station. The sample count will be made known as a percentage of the valid votes for each candidate. The results of the sample count will be announced while the rest of the counting is still going on.

The ELD, however, has said that the final result can still be different from the sample count, and the public should wait for the official announcement, which is likely to be in the early hours of Saturday.

There is also the possibility of a recount, which is what happened at the 2011 election. A recount will automatically be carried out if the difference between the number of votes for the leading candidate and for any other candidate is 2 per cent or less. 

As for the overseas votes, a recount will be needed only if the number brings the margin of difference to within 2 per cent between the top two candidates.

Once the results are verified, all that’s left to do is for the Returning Officer – Housing and Development Board chief Tan Meng Dui – to read out the results on national television and radio, and declare the winner to be Singapore’s ninth president.