Junta election commission claims to have found 3,246 cases of voter fraud in 2020 poll

The junta’s election commission has said it uncovered just 2,169 cases of double voting and 1,077 other cases of voter fraud during the 2020 election, numbers that amount to a tiny fraction of the millions who voted.

Min Aung Hlaing claimed in the wake of last year’s coup that he was compelled to topple the civilian government of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the 2020 poll in a massive landslide, because of widespread voter fraud. 

But the junta’s own figures, revealed by election commission member Khin Maung Oo at a press conference on Friday, would mean that around 0.1% of the roughly 26 million people who cast ballots last year were guilty of fraud. 

“We are still trying to take action against the 2,169 double voting cases who have the same names and ID numbers. Investigations are still underway,” Khin Maung Oo told the conference in the capital Naypyitaw. 

About 70% of Myanmar’s 38,271,477 eligible voters took part in the election on November 8, the result of which was a humiliation for the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party. 

Aung Kyi Nyunt, an NLD central executive committee member, said: “The whole country and the whole world knows that they’re lying. They keep saying there was voter fraud but they still can’t prove it.”

After the coup the junta installed as its election commission chair Thein Soe, who oversaw the rigged 2010 election that brought the USDP to power. Thein Soe cancelled the results of the 2020 poll after his re-appointment.

Khin Maung Oo said on Friday that 546 cases had been taken action and 342 have been filed to courts in relation to alleged offences, though he did not give details. 

Authorities have filed cases against suspected fraudsters under Section 171f of Penal Code, which punishes election fraud with up to a year in prison, a fine, or both, according to a local election commission member in Amarapura. 

He also said that two people from among the township’s 150,000 voters had been arrested.

“An order is out,” he told Myanmar Now. We have already been told that cases will be filed against double-voters and that it would have to be done by the end of December, so we started filing those cases on December 30 and 31,” he said.

The junta pledged in February last year to hold another election, but the proposal has been rejected by anti-coup activists who say the rightful winners of the 2020 poll, the NLD, should be returned to power.

The junta has targeted the NLD’s members at all levels of seniority members with arrests, killings, and torture but has not officially outlawed the party.