Court upholds Feb 8 election, rejects objection to coded ballots

The Constitutional Court bench delivers its ruling on coded ballot papers on Monday. (Screenshot) The Constitutional Court on Monday ruled that ballots with barcodes and quick response (QR) codes were designed for effective election supervision and did not violate voters' rights and liberties protected by the Constitution.

The ruling responded to 22 complaints questioning whether barcodes and QR codes on ballot papers in the Feb 8 general election could be used to reveal the decisions of individual voters. A breach of voting secrecy violates the constitution.

Before the ruling, the court heard from senior officials of the Election Commission (EC) and executives of the companies that printed ballot papers.

The court ruled that QR codes on constituency ballots could be used to trace 20 voters who received ballot papers from the same ballot lots and voted for the same candidate. It was difficult to determine the choice of a particular voter. The court concluded that QR codes could not reveal the voting decision of each voter.

For party-list ballots, their barcodes could have revealed individual voters’ decisions only if a party had access to used ballots, their stubs and the lists of voters’ names and used mobile phones to scan the codes on all the documents.

In fact, the three kinds of documents were separately and securely kept and outsiders could not match the three kinds of documents without help from officials of polling units or provincial election authorities. The conspiracy would have been illegal.

The court ruled that it was difficult for outsiders and officials to access these three kinds of documents.

Barcode and QR codes were applied to prevent use of fake ballot papers and their cross-constituency use, and to control the number and printing of ballots. It was aimed at guaranteeing a fair election, the court said.

Although the charter court endorsed the legality of coded ballots, it advised the EC not to use any codes or symbols that connected to the results.

A party-list ballot with its barcode.

A constituency ballot with its QR code.