The Democrat Party was forced to postpone yesterday's planned e-voting in its leadership contest in Bangkok, the North and the Central Plains branches -- because someone forgot to set the clock.
Thailand's oldest political party was all set for its historic electronic voting session to begin at its branches at 8am yesterday. Instead, members were left waiting.
The Raspberry Pi computer-based voting system which the party installed to serve the election failed to function.
Red-faced Chumpol Kanjana and Thana Cheerawinit, the party's election officials, apologised to members nationwide from their headquarters in Bangkok.
It turned out the party's IT staff had carefully prepared in advance for the first use of electronic voting in Thailand, except for one small detail; they forgot to adjust the system's timezone from Greenwich Mean Time to Indochina Time, or the Thai time zone.
Consequently, the system would have been working from 3pm yesterday to 1am today, because GMT is seven hours behind Thailand. The party, therefore, cancelled the voting procedure.
Staff at those branches were busy returning voting devices to the headquarters in Bangkok where they would be reset to Thai time. Mr Chumpol said the technical error was unexpected despite careful preparations. The voting has been rescheduled for Nov 9, while the e-vote will go ahead as scheduled in the South and Northeast on Nov 5.
However, online voting by party members using an Android-based mobile phone app named ''D-elect'' proceeded as planned yesterday and will run until tomorrow.
As chairman of the party committee responsible for the voting procedure, he was ready to accept responsibility, Mr Chumpol said, adding efforts were being made to fix the problem.
There are three contenders for the party leadership -- incumbent party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, former party deputy leader Alongkorn Ponlaboot, and former Democrat Phitsanulok MP Warong Dechgitvigrom.
Late last month, the three candidates promised to pursue economic policies that will help reduce income inequality and ensure growth is beneficial to the poor.
At a debate held earlier at the party's head office, incumbent leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said if he wins the race for the party's top post and the Democrat Party wins the election, he will implement a new indicator or index to gauge the livelihood of the Thai people because it is now clear that GDP alone cannot reflect reality.
