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PollWatch organization. started to train. on a broader scale. volunteers for election observa-
tion activities. the ECT opted out of this field and left it to them. Moreover. they prohibited
the constitution volunteers. currently employed under the Miyazawa loan. from participating

in such trainings and activities. Quite correctly. they argued that the constitution volunteers
were working under the ECT. and the PollWatch Foundation needed to operate as an inde-
pendent organization. Also. both the ECT and the PollWatch Foundation needed to avoid
confusing the public. as well as the volunteers themselves. about who is who and what were the
responsibilities of the respective organizations.

There is one core task of utmost importance that. in the narrow sense. has little to

do with the administration of elections. This task concerns public relations. The constitution
provides for an election system that is very different from what Thailand used to have. and
Senators will also be elected for the first time-and according to some strange rules. one may
add. For this reason. the ECT will have to make the voters understand what is expected of
them. It must not be forgotten that voting is not only compulsory. but not fulflliing one's duty
as a voter leads to one losing some constitutional rights. Informing citizens about the new
election system is not made easier by the fact that. in the provinces. there are a large number
of illiterate or semiliterate villagers who cannot be reached by printed material. In general.
villagers can be reached only by talking to them. A few weeks back. I observed mock-elections

that were part of an exercise of imforming villagers about what to do at the polling station. etc.
When the votes were counted. about 30% of the ballots were categorized as invalid. Obviously.
there is only one correct way of marking the ballots. However. it certainly is an easy task for
a legal expert in an air-conditioned room in a Bankok office building to mark the ballot paper.
Thia is a lot more difficult for a middle-aged woman or man in a village. standing in a dimly
lit polling booth. and using an unfamiliar pencil on the rough surface of a wooden table. In

the mentioned exercise. most of the invalid ballots clearly showed the intention of the respec-
tive voters. They were considered invalid merely for technical-legal reasons. Although the
proportion of invalid votes will drop when the more educated villagers. who were at work at
the time the exercise took place. take part. it is still unsatistactory to deprive people of their
constitutional rights to vote for a candidate simply because they are not 'sophisticated' enough
to conform to standards set in Bangkok.

There is one more thing to worry about. namely voters being deprived of some of

their constitutional rights because they did not vote in the senatorial elections. As you cer-
tainly know from newspaper reports. candidates are basically not allowed to make themselves
known to the people. and they are prevented from electioneering. How can one expect
villagers to vote for candidates they have never heard of. who are known only to the provin-
cial-level administrative and political elite. who have never done anything for the villagers. and

who are not recommended to them by their village heads or by other vote canvassers? Under
these conditions. there will certainly be as exceedingly high number of non-voters. In case a