BANGKOK, Sept 28 — Thailand's Constitutional Court has ruled that the barcodes and QR codes printed on ballots in the February general election did not violate the charter's guarantee of voting secrecy, allowing the election result to stand.
According to a court statement, the nine-judge panel voted unanimously that using QR codes on ballots was constitutional and voted 8-1 that the barcodes on party-list ballots were also constitutional.
It said the codes were used to control and verify ballots and did not directly reveal how anyone voted, as tracing a vote would require linking the ballot, its counterfoil, and the voter list.
After inspecting ballot storage sites, the court found that the Election Commission had kept the documents under sufficiently strict security.
It also found no evidence that any person or agency had linked the documents in a way that could reveal how a voter had cast a ballot.
The barcodes served legitimate purposes, including preventing counterfeit ballots, controlling ballot numbers, stopping ballots from being used in the wrong constituency, and managing printing within the time frame the constitution sets for holding elections.
However, the court said the matter had affected public trust in the Election Commission’s handling of the election. It recommended that the commission design future ballots without markings that could link voters to their votes and apply particularly strict security measures to the ballots at issue in the case.
The country's Ombudsman petitioned the court after receiving 22 complaints over the Election Commission's ballot design in the February 8 general election.
The complainants argued that the codes printed on ballot papers made it possible to trace voters and their choices, breaching several constitutional provisions.
About 37.8 million Thais voted in the election, in which incumbent Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s Bhumjaithai Party won decisively before leading the formation of a coalition government.
