Over 401,000 postal ballots from expat voters arrived

Staff Reporter :

A total of 401,460 postal ballots cast by expatriate voters for the 13th National Parliamentary Election and referendum have arrived in Bangladesh.

The ballots were submitted by voters registered through the “Postal Vote BD” app. Salim Ahmad Khan, Team Leader of the Overseas Voter Registration-SDI (OCV-SDI) project disclosed the information while speaking to journalists on Friday.

He said that as of 9:30am on Friday, a total of 766,862 ballots had been sent to expatriate voters who registered via the app. Of them, 526,498 expatriates have received their ballots. So far, 482,817 voters have completed voting.

In addition, 449,006 expatriate voters have submitted their completed ballots to the respective country’s post office or postal authority. Returning officers have already received 124,746 of these ballots.

Alongside expatriate voters, the Election Commission (EC) has also started sending postal ballots to voters residing within the country under the In-Country Postal Voting (ICPV) system.

So far, ballots have been dispatched to the addresses of 694,146 registered voters inside Bangladesh.
According to the latest EC data, as of 9:30am on Friday, 324,002 voters inside the country had received their ballots.

Among them, 259,394 voters have cast their votes, while 213,697 voters have submitted their ballots to post offices or postal boxes. Returning officers have so far received 30,706 ballots from domestic voters.

For the 13th National Parliamentary Election and the referendum, a total of 1,533,684 voters -both at home and abroad – have registered to vote by postal ballot through the “Postal Vote BD” app.

Voting for the national election and referendum will take place on February 12, from 7:30am to 4:30pm.