There exists, to our knowledge, no compilation of data on the exact design and the disposition of polling booths within polling stations, and therefore we cannot provide you with any country by country detail.

However, most countries follow commonly agreed standards regarding measures to preserve the secrecy of the vote both during the voting and counting processes, something which is considered as one of the main guiding principles in elections. If in a polling station the secrecy of the vote is not guaranteed, voter privacy – as you have pointed out – can very well be at risk, impacting the election results by facilitating the coercion/intimidation of electors to vote in a certain way, ultimately even endangering voters who do not comply with coercion attempts.

Without knowing in detail the setup of the polling booths and the polling stations at the elections in Thailand, one can come to the tentative conclusion that an arrangement of having voters marking their ballot papers with their backs turned at polling staff/election observers does not seem to provide sufficient guarantees that the secrecy of their vote is adequately preserved.

While this doesn’t mean that polling staff or election observers will necessarily infringe the secrecy of the vote, this arrangement could provide incentives for widespread perception by the voters, parties and candidates that the actual levels of secrecy of the vote are not there, thus affecting the overall integrity of the process and the credibility, legitimacy and trust in the elections and in the election results. It is, therefore, necessary to ensure at all times that proper arrangements are in place in a polling station to protect the secrecy of the vote, both real and perceived. Any exceptions to this rule should have to be judged carefully.

While every country has its own arrangements, there are some general, essential measures and safeguards to preserve the secrecy of the vote in polling stations, such as:

• the polling station has to be properly laid out, that is: the way in which a polling station is structured, the flow (in and out) of voters, the disposition of the polling booths (always far from windows), the place where observers and party representatives sit (never in the immediate proximity of the polling booth).
• the election materials employed for the vote have to be adequate to the functions they have to fulfil: polling booths have to be designed so to guarantee that the secrecy of the vote is preserved, they have to be steady, possibly with curtains or shelters, with a board that voters can use to place the ballot paper in order to mark it properly, so that voters can feel absolutely confident that indeed no one is able to see how they are voting.
• Possibly, there should be uniformity in the type of materials used, since leaving to local polling station officers the responsibility of independently setting up privacy compartments may result in poor or inadequate arrangements.

Rightly, infringements on the secrecy of the vote, conscious or otherwise, are often subject to intense election observer scrutiny and criticism.

The particular issue of the placing of polling booths was noted as a problem in the Interim Statement by the EISA Election Observation Mission: South African National and Provincial Elections 12-14 April 2004 .

Also, ANFREL has written a report (click here to download it) on this specific issue after the April 2006 House elections in Thailand, which is available on:

You may also want to contact ANFREL directly for more information on this specific case.