Voting
There were many allegations of electoral fraud on the day of the election, including:
- A village visited by officials in advance of the referendum where 185 people were forced to vote "yes" with absentee ballots
- Officials giving out ballot papers already filled in with a tick
- Voters ordered to complete votes for their relatives
- Government officials sitting close to the ballot boxes and telling voters how to vote
- Voters bribed to vote "yes"
- Officials closing polling stations at 11:00 a.m. and then going to the houses of people who hadn't voted and making them vote then
Opposition groups, including the All Burma Monks' Alliance, the 88 Generation Students Group and the All Burma Federation of Student Unions, described the referendum as a sham.
Read more about this topic: Burmese Constitutional Referendum, 2008
Famous quotes containing the word voting:
“Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.”
—Tom Stoppard (b. 1937)