The Right to Vote: The Stories of Overseas Singaporeans
There are over 217,000 overseas Singaporeans. Not all of them are eligible to vote, as some are under-aged and a citizen has to spend at least 30 days in a three-year period in Singapore to qualify as an “overseas elector.” Still, it is a remarkable statistic that only 3,415 ballots were cast overseas in GE 2015.
The ten overseas polling stations designated for GE 2020 are located in Canberra, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Dubai, London, Washington D.C., New York, and San Francisco. There are no polling stations in Malaysia or any other Southeast Asian country. Overseas voters take on the challenges of travel in election years. All Singaporeans based in Europe, for instance, have to travel to London in order to cast their ballot. Those living anywhere in Southeast Asia have to make a trip back to Singapore to exercise their right to vote.
The timing of the election during a global pandemic has adversely affected the possibility of such travel. Travel restrictions across national and regional borders will remain in effect when overseas Singaporeans vote in July 2020. For a Singaporean living in Toronto, a two-hour flight to New York City might have been manageable in a regular election year—travel restrictions between the US-Canada border put the possibility of this trip into question. Overseas voters who travel internationally and regionally often face 14-day quarantines upon arrival, and similar quarantines when they return home. For instance, this applies to overseas Singaporeans who return to Singapore to cast their ballots.
Many cities, regions, and even countries are still in “lockdown” at the time of writing. If an overseas voter chooses to travel or commute to their nearest polling station, they undertake emergency travel that greatly increases their risk of contracting the virus. Traveling internationally or domestically by plane or train, or even when taking public transportation, they increase the possibility of transmission to their households and communities.
Inspired by the accounts that have been circulating among overseas Singaporeans in the last week, we wish to share with our fellow Singaporeans the exceptional circumstances and difficult decisions that we face in voting. The following entries were submitted in response to an open call for “the personal stories of overseas Singaporeans who face various challenges in exercising their right to vote in GE2020…. The stories should focus on the logistical, geographical, pandemic-related, and other challenges of voting, and not on the criticism of any political parties in Singapore.”
Singaporeans who live abroad are deeply invested in the future of their country. We wish to participate in making that future by casting our vote. As more and more Singaporeans venture abroad for academic, economic, and personal reasons, the challenge of making their voices heard at elections will not diminish but will only grow.
The following stories have been lightly edited for clarity and style.
I wish I were able to vote in this GE
I live in Boston, which is about four hours away from New York City. I don't have a car, and if not for the COVID-19 pandemic I would have taken the bus or train to vote at the Singapore consulate in NYC. However, given that public health safety measures in the US vary from state to state, I don't feel comfortable taking public transport and will forego the opportunity to vote this year.
I voted as an overseas Singaporean once, in 2011 when I was in London. The High Commission made the process straightforward and painless, and it was personally significant because it was the first time—in my late thirties!—that I voted (in previous elections, my constituency had been a walkover). That said, many other Singaporeans had to travel to London or from other parts of Europe to cast their vote. Even without a pandemic, these trips incur significant cost, time and flexibility in being able to take time off work or school.
If the government of Singapore truly values what is stated in our national pledge "to build a democratic society,” it should make voting easy for overseas Singaporeans. It doesn't matter how many citizens are affected: one, ten, hundreds or thousands. Singapore is one of wealthiest, most high-tech and least corrupt nations in the world, not to mention that the government's handling of the pandemic has shown that it is willing to speedily innovate and come up with technological solutions such as TraceTogether and a wearable token.
While I'm wary of surveillance technologies, I'm all for the same ingenuity, resources and wherewithal being applied to allow Singapore citizens overseas to vote by mail or online. Once the infrastructure—postal, technological or others—is established, it can be exercised for subsequent elections; there's no need to reinvent the wheel each time. Software may have to be updated, but the same is true for, say, a TraceTogether app or the SingPass system.
Every vote counts. Every Singapore citizen has a right to vote, which isn't contingent on whether an individual vote will sway the outcome of a particular constituency. As long as a citizen living overseas can be contacted by the Singapore government by mail, phone or online, and their identity can be remotely notarized or authenticated, there should be a reliable mechanism that allows them to vote without having to travel to one of a paltry ten overseas polling stations.
If I'm registered as an overseas elector when the next election is called, I look forward to being able to exercise my citizen's right to vote from wherever I happen to be in the world—as conveniently as I now remotely file and pay my taxes to IRAS!
—Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
Bread and butter issues
When the call for elections was announced, I was simultaneously struck with disappointment and frustration. As an overseas Singaporean pursuing my PhD at the University of Toronto in Canada, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis effectively eliminates any chance that I have of voting in GE2020. The nearest polling station is across an international border: 790 km away in New York City. Under normal circumstances, it would have been an 8-hour drive or a CAS200 (S$270) plane ticket. These were themselves significant barriers to voting that hindered me in GE2015 when I was an undergraduate student in Montreal, Canada. A 24-hour, CAD1000+ (S$1390+) flight home to Singapore was even more out of the question. But today, on top of that, there are additional questions of how long I will have to serve in quarantine in the US or Singapore, and will I be denied re-entry into Canada and access to my education and job as a teaching assistant. So, to respond to Minister Lawrence Wong, there are many reasons I cannot come back and vote: many of them bread and butter issues. As a Singaporean citizen, voting is my duty and obligation. It should not be so hard to participate in my country’s democracy.
—Yi Yang
I leave at eleven in the morning, and return at midnight
The email arrives, its subject line immediately visible. The polling date is one day earlier than I had thought, and I spend Wednesday morning looking up trains all over again. The blue of my calendar blurs into the blue of Google Maps into the blue of the transit authority’s trip planner as I tab between browser windows, mapping, experimentally, a set of possible itineraries. It was a five-hour journey each way in 2015, and I am grateful that this time, at least, it is only four. I remember a former colleague, an American, marvelling at my insistence on voting, given the difficulty of doing so. Things are easier for her here.
When to leave, and when to return?
I think of the regular rush of peak-hour commuters and feel queasy. I once spent two of the four hours on the way to New York with my legs between my opposite number’s, our knees interlaced in an alternating pattern, a continuing rhythm running from the aisle seats to our shared window. The first train does not worry me. It is the second, the Metro-North out of New Haven, a train of suits, hoodies, prep school uniforms, and Yankees hats. It passes through a town that made it to the national newspapers in March for a ‘super-spreader’ event: one birthday party, fifty guests, a visitor from Johannesburg, twenty positive test results. I see all the people waiting on the platforms as the train slides into each station, like so many vectors pointing inexorably towards me.
I decide to leave in the late morning. I have a video call at three, and the train will arrive at Grand Central ten minutes before that. I have ten minutes to look up, to observe the queue for the exit, positioning myself as far apart from everyone else as possible (six feet is surely too much to ask), to wait for the long tone of the single sliding door opening, emerging from the fluorescence of the tunnels into—what? how many other people like me?—before looking for a place, reasonably quiet, reasonably isolated, where I can log on to talk about work as if I were at home, like the others on the call, like we are all, here, still being advised to. Maybe it will be a clear day, and maybe I will take the call outside. They tell us that being outdoors reduces transmission rates by a factor of twenty. At four, I walk the six blocks to the consulate, and wait in line to vote. My train back to New Haven leaves at eight. The last leg, from New Haven to Hartford, departs at eleven.
In two days, I will leave the house to vote. I leave at eleven in the morning, and return at midnight.
—Shou Jie Eng
My last trip to Singapore was a 60-hour journey
Right at the beginning of the year when social media was peppered with rumors about the General Elections going to be held within the year, possibly in the midst of the then-budding would-be-pandemic scene in Singapore, I felt once more that I would be denied the opportunity to vote.
I left Singapore for South America in 2014. What began as a simple gap year (with a return ticket in Feb 2015) turned out to be a long-term stay. Today I pursue further studies in the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, a public university located in Mendoza, Argentina's beautiful province situated at the foot of the Andes mountain ranges. A quick Google Maps check reveals that Mendoza is 8000 km from Washington, 11000 km from Canberra or London, and much further to other cities. My last trip to Singapore was a 60-hour journey that included a 14-hour, long-distance bus ride to Buenos Aires, a short plane ride to Sao Paolo (Brazil), a Trans-atlantic flight to Istanbul (Turkey), another long haul to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), and finally a connection to Singapore. That in itself is a logistic challenge at any time of the year, more so during the pandemic. If we look at the financial aspect of things, this journey isn't cheap (upwards of S$3500 pre-pandemic prices) and, with a lot of us either losing jobs or cutting back on hours, the burden is enormous.
Regarding the issue of mail-in votes, I would like to make a little suggestion. There are many ways a vote can be tampered along the way, and there are also many ways a vote can be secured. Hopefully this method can be considered or improved upon to eventually be considered for future elections.
1. To ensure the "in-person" voting criterion of no fake votes, we can request the voter to be present at the local embassy or consulate, personally mark the vote slip, and fold it. Then, witnessed by either the diplomat or a staff acting on their behalf, place the vote slip (folded and thus secret) into an envelope. The voter signature is needed to prevent fraud, and the diplomat seal is needed for the same reason. It's like a 2-factor authentication. The envelope will have the name of the GRC/SMC printed outside (pre-printed, pre-prepared together with the poll card), but otherwise no different from all other envelopes with the same GRC/SMC. That is to say, no index number.
2. Seal the envelope, sign on the flap, and witness the diplomat place the seal on the same flap.
3. The diplomat will then collect all the votes in the same way and mail them in bulk back to Singapore. The bulk parcel ensures that any postmarks or stamps are placed on the outside envelope. This allows the individual vote envelopes to be free of any evidence of their country of origin. That is to say, any link between the vote itself and the voter's overseas place of residence is erased at this stage.
4. Once in Singapore, the sealed packet will be sent to ELD. Over there, the seal (both on the packet and on individual envelopes) are checked to ensure integrity of the vote slips contained within. Also, the voter signatures are checked to ensure that no two envelopes bear the same signature. This is quite redundant as the diplomat should have ensured on their end that one person votes one time, exactly like how our names are struck off the book when we vote in person in Singapore, but serves as a second layer of check.
5. Sort the envelopes (still sealed) by GRC/SMC. It can be either done manually or automated.
6. Then, pass the envelopes through a machine designed to cut them open and release their contents. The vote slips will drop out into a container to be collected in bulk, while the envelopes (now empty) will be sent by conveyor to another container or another area. The use of a machine for this task is to avoid any possible link that can be made between the signature on an envelope and the vote slip contained inside. I like to believe we still have 1970s machines free of artificial intelligence 2.0 that are capable of this monotonous task.
7. Ensure the number of empty envelopes coincide with the number of vote slips. This both avoids a vote slip being accidentally stuck inside an envelope, as well as avoid fraud through the manipulation (addition or removal) of vote slips.
8. Open them and count them. Now that the vote slips have been physically separated from their envelopes, the identity of the voter is secret.
—Teo LC
I haven’t followed much of the political scene with the snap election
My cousin here doesn’t want to head to Canberra to vote coz of Covid. Personally, I was going to vote—but decided not to. I have to enroll to get voted, take day off, drive to Canberra. I haven’t followed much of the political scene with the snap election. So not going to bother... That’s it! It’s mostly me being too lazy. I have actually never voted before, as there has either been no opponents, or was out of country (no access to polling stations).
—SS
After 10 years, nothing has been done
I am a Singapore Citizen who has been living in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, since 2007. I have never been able to vote in the General Elections since. Singaporeans in Japan are able to vote only at the Tokyo overseas polling station. However, a return trip from Iwate Prefecture to Tokyo costs at least S$400 (31,000yen) in transport costs alone.
This year, the possibility of going to Tokyo to vote is made worse because of the pandemic. Travelers returning to Iwate Prefecture from outside of the prefecture are requested to serve a 14-day quarantine, meaning I would be unable to go to work. On top of that, there are rules that stipulate that if people have family members they live with who have been out of the prefecture, they are not allowed to go to work or school during the quarantine period too. This means that I would cause my husband and children to be unable to go out of the house as well. Because of these reasons, it is impossible for me to travel to Tokyo to vote.
In 2010, I wrote to TODAY Voices highlighting the issue, because it was, and still is, a matter close to my heart and it leaves me full of regret and sadness that I cannot take part in the General Elections and have my voice heard. I attach the letter here. After 10 years, we see that nothing has been done to improve the situation despite the world moving ahead in technological advancement and Singapore ranked among the top in innovation and cutting-edge technology. Meanwhile I sit out the General Elections every five years, wondering if my right as a voter has been automatically and involuntarily relinquished when I decided to move out of Singapore.
—Wang Hui Ling
Wang Hui Ling’s letter to TODAY Voices in 2010.
The only way to access SingPass without a local number is to get a One Key Token
The first time I was eligible to vote was during my sophomore year of college. I still keep my Singapore number for visits back home since it is an add-on to my father’s phone plan and the number has a sentimental value to it. At the time I was told that I could only link my SingPass to a local number. When it came time to register to vote, I was unable to do so because my Singapore number did not have overseas service to receive the One-Time Pin (OTP); as such, I was removed from the register of electors.
The only way to access SingPass without a local number is to get a One Key Token, which requires a local number to register for. The One Key Token is also being phased out due to low usage. It will be replaced with SingPass Mobile, which also requires the OTP. The alternative to get the OTP is to mail a pin to my Singapore address. I cannot imagine how much more of a hassle it would be if I didn’t have an address to mail the pin to due to personal reasons etc..
Now, the only sure-fire way for me to vote would be to go back to Singapore, re-register to have my name back on the register of electors, and register as an overseas elector. I am unable to do so due to my work, visa, and Covid-19 situation, and will most likely have to forfeit my right to vote this election cycle if the mailed pin does not work.
We all left for our own reasons but it does not mean we no longer love Singapore. Being unable to vote is being unable to exercise that love.
—Jean Ng
48 hours to register ourselves
My wife and I, both Singaporeans, live in Western Massachusetts . We are two-and-a-half hours away from New York City by car, which puts us in a small, privileged group of overseas Singaporeans with an overseas polling station within reasonable reach.
However, it's only thanks to the wherewithal of my wife that we are registered to vote at all. Within a day of the announcement of the dissolution of parliament and the date of the general elections, she emailed an MFA contact about the process for registration for overseas voters. She was told that we had 48 hours to register ourselves and that we needed our SingPass login information to register on the online portal. According to ELD website, applications will not be processed during the period from the 3rd day after the Writ for an election is issued until the Polling Day for the election. Registration is otherwise open all-year round, but we were not aware of this.
The process from there was pretty straightforward for me because I have to use my SingPass regularly, but it was another administrative hurdle for my wife, who rarely uses hers and had to scramble to get it working. Thankfully, we managed to get registered, and received our polling cards, both electronically and in the mail, and will be making the drive to the consulate in New York City on 9 July to cast our ballots.
—Teoh Yi Peng
That is a lot of remembering for something I should be able to do easily
On 9th July, I will be making my first trip since 15th March on public transport—the London Underground—so that I can cast my vote at the Singapore High Commission in London. I can do this because I live in a city where there is an overseas polling station. If I lived in another English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish city, I would need to consider the risks of added travel time, travel costs, and contact with 'other people' while using public transport at a time when infection rates are still quite high and unpredictable. If I lived in a city under lockdown still, where there is still no way of getting from one place to another by train or plane, this would be impossible.
This is the second time I am casting my vote as an overseas voter. I did that at the last General Election too but didn't in the ones prior for the simple reason of forgetting to register in time. So I was removed from the electoral register. That meant for a couple of weeks, I was in limbo trying to reinstate my right to vote. It took some paperwork, but it was straightforward. After that, I had to remain vigilant and checked, at every moment when I read rumors online about general elections in Singapore, that I was still on the register as an overseas voter. This year, the Elections Department quite helpfully reminded me to update my status as an overseas voter way back in March, so I knew what was coming. That is a lot of remembering for something I should be able to do easily because it is compulsory, but there you go.
—Priscilla
Don’t forget about me, as I have never forgotten you
I moved to Shanghai in 2009 and participated in all elections when I was there for 7.5 years. Then I moved to London in 2016, and this election was the first time I thought I would be voting in London. I have always been diligent in updating my information with the Consulate and was surprised to see that they had sent the poll-card to my address in Singapore.
I reached out to the Elections Department on June 23rd upon finding out that my family in Singapore had received the poll card, but I never heard back. Calls to the Consulate were unanswered until early July.
I wasn't sure if I should be re-registering as an overseas voter as I had already done so in 2019, and finally, on 4th July, I managed to get a hold of someone from Singapore High Commission in London. I was told that I had missed the deadline to register (which was 25 June). My partner is classified by the UK Government as Clinically Extremely Vulnerable, so having to travel to vote does concern me (for fear that I might catch the virus and pass it to him), but upon discussing it with him, he felt that I should exercise my right to vote.
I asked the Singapore High Commission in London if I could still turn up as I was eligible to vote, but I was told that I would only be given a letter of attendance, but would not be allowed to vote. I am really disappointed as I do feel that the right to vote is something that makes me feel I'm part of Singapore. I'm sharing a screenshot of what I shared on my Facebook, and this statement rings true for me, "I may be away from home, but home is still Singapore. So don't forget about me, as I have never forgotten you.”
—Ying
Ying’s screenshot of her Facebook post
Denied Voting Because of a Computer Glitch
Very unfortunate to be denied voting during our time back in Singapore. We were informed that we can't vote, despite having:
1) Registered twice for a local contact address (LCA) with my parents’ place for election purposes, once on 13 Sep 2019 and once on 18 June 2020 (even before GE was announced on 23 June 2020),
2) Reminded my parents on WhatsApp and via calls to keep a look out for the verification letters on both registrations
3) Been told that if we want to vote, we can come back to Singapore as per statement from Minister Lawrence Wong.
4) Corresponded many times with ELD to share the lapse and to get their help to (i) reinstate our voting status and (ii) investigate how the lapse happened.
5) Highlighted that my case does not appear to be isolated as my wife and a number of overseas Singaporeans are also facing similar challenges. I found out about the latter only after joining a Facebook group called SG Overseas Voters 2020.
Reasons given by ELD:
1) No response from my parents to verify my registration during my first registration in Sep 2019.
2)The address given in my second registration on 18 June 2020 was invalid.
I only found out about the two reasons on 28 June 2020, after pressing ELD for an explanation, though I have reservations. At the moment, I have yet to confirm the reason why my wife's 2019 separate registration (to a different address) has not been accepted either. Clearly, there are many others who have faced the same issues, which have also been flagged for ELD’s attention. Even if our registration didn't get through earlier for some reasons, shouldn't a letter be sent to inform us about it? Of course, I could have done better by contacting ELD earlier after my past 2 registrations.
As a result, I can't vote because the cut-off date to register a local contact address is 1 March 2020. I've escalated a final plea through email to the relevant authorities but I’m not hopeful at this point.
After much pursuing, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) has finally confirmed in writing that a computer system glitch has happened, which resulted in our local contact address (LCA) not being registered, not once but twice! So, that means we can't vote in GE2020. So much for ELD telling us that the initial error was due to an invalid address given by us. Had we not pursued this…. ELD has always been our contact point but couldn't even reply to our last email when we pursued this matter and we had to rely on ICA to do that.
An excerpt of ICA's response is as follows:
"Under the Parliamentary Elections Act, no further names can be included in the Registers for the current General Election after the Registers were certified on 15 April 2020. An inclusion could have been possible if a claim had been submitted by a SC [editor: Singapore Citizen] when the Registers were open for public inspection from 14 March 2020 to 27 March 2020, as announced by ELD on 13 March 2020. For example, 168 SCs who had checked the Registers had submitted claims to be included in the Registers and these were successful. Overseas Singaporeans were able to inspect the Registers online or at Singapore overseas missions that serve as overseas registration centres."
Rather than the 168 people who made the amendments, my concern is the many who have been affected as a result of their system glitch. And if we didn’t flag it up vigorously, this too would have been swept under the carpet. Of course, I'm quite resigned that the blame will be placed on us in being 'negligent' and not checking earlier.
—Melvin Seet
The thinking on overseas voting seems decades behind
I just received my letter from ELD at 6:10 am this morning, telling me to go vote at the consulate in NYC. I am located about three-and-a-half hours away by car. I don't own a car. Ordinarily, I would not think twice about going to exercise my right to vote. In fact, I had been thinking earlier this year about how I can plan a trip to NYC just to vote, whether by renting a car, taking the train, or even flying. A privilege to think of in these times, I know.
Now, as the United States is convulsing in yet another spike in COVID-19 infections and continuing tensions due to racial injustice and police brutality, I am not sure going down to NYC is sufficiently safe. This means that I am effectively disenfranchised. This is particularly concerning if there is a close vote.
The real tragedy in all of this is that there are straightforward, well-established remedies such as mail-in voting, This is a task I am sure Singapore's vaunted bureaucracy can easily handle. For whatever reason the ELD continues to believe that this is not suitable for Singaporeans overseas. It is a pity because Singapore's diplomatic representations overseas are limited and there are Singaporeans residing in huge countries such as the United States and Canada where going off to vote is not easy.
For all our talk about advancement in Singapore, the thinking on overseas voting seems decades behind.
—IC
A strange kind of sadness
The rail commute between my town in New Jersey and New York City involves a couple hours and a single change of trains. The pandemic has affected this typically busy commute. Since March, the trains have mostly been occupied by essential workers who do not own cars.
Having voted abroad in the last election, I am mindful of the steps required to maintain my eligibility to vote as an overseas Singaporean. But when the email reminder from the ELD to register as an overseas voter arrived this year, I decided to forego the registration. The states of New York and New Jersey were hit badly by COVID-19. As the health crisis worsens elsewhere in the United States, we remain rightly cautious here. I’ve been to an indoor public space just once since the lockdown started. I had to rule out traveling to New York City—for the risk it poses to my roommates and the community I live in.
When I heard from my family, on July 5, that my poll card had arrived at their Singapore address, I felt a strange kind of sadness. My ballot, which I will not get to hold in my own hands.
—YS
Accessibility to voting is the right step forward to changing apathy
I am in San Francisco and I can vote. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for my fellow countrymen around the world, or for my girlfriend who is here with me. She does not have her One Key Token and no longer has her Singapore phone number. Hence, she is unable to access Singpass in time to make her vote count.
I missed the 2015 election as I was in Seattle for my undergrad studies. I thought the Singapore Consulate General in Vancouver, Canada, would be a short three-hour trip across the border but later found that we were even further restricted in the places where we could vote.
Having been in the States for the last five years, I feel a growing sense of patriotism in me. Prior to that, I never thought of Singapore as anything more than the first 21 years of my life. I trace the probable origins of this change to Crazy Rich Asians but more likely is the surge in popularity of Singaporean cuisine here in the Bay Area. Splurging on a $20 bowl of laksa is not my ideal kind of patriotism, but voting sure is.
People say Singaporeans are apathetic towards politics and unfortunately that may be true to a certain extent. I do think accessibility to voting is the right step forward to changing this. Even though I am thousands of miles away, I am still up-to-date with the latest East Coast Plan and I still care and want my vote to count.
—Ashley Lim
One people, one nation, one Singapore?
We are who we are because of our education, upbringing, and life lessons learnt. I have sung this song (“One People, One Nation, One Singapore”) many times since I was a little girl and also at the last National Day Parade preview held at the old National Stadium some years ago. That patriotic feeling in the stadium as we sang together makes me feel proud to be a Singaporean.
Fast forward to the last 10 years, i found myself moving around the world for work and family. I missed the 2015 election as I was in Derbyshire UK and the nearest polling station was in London, a long 2-3 hour drive during a time when the A1 motorway was under upgrading. My husband had to work and I couldn’t get there on my own as it would mean up to 4 hours each way on public transport and we have just adopted a rescue dog that needed looking after.
This election, I missed my chance to vote again because Thailand does not have a polling station. I have written to ELD to ask for alternative arrangement due to the Covid-19 situation but was told that only countries with a critical mass of Singaporeans have an overseas polling station to go to and I could only vote in Singapore. That hurts. Suddenly I felt like an outcast from my country. I felt left behind just because I had left my country for my family. We still have our home in Singapore waiting for our return in future. Prior to leaving Singapore, I went to see my MP to thank him personally for his support and was very much hoping to be able to vote for him to stay on as my MP.
Thanks to the fellow overseas Singaporeans whom I have connected with on Facebook who feel as disappointed as I am, I could experience that Singapore kampong spirit that we once had as a country.
Job opportunities take us and our family beyond Singapore. We may have left the country physically, but we have not forgotten who we are, and we certainly do not want to be forgotten.
—L
Voting shouldn’t be a luxury
This year was the first time I voted. There were two other earlier elections where I was eligible to vote, but I was also overseas both of those times, and overseas voting was too much of a hassle then. I'm still overseas, and overseas voting is unfortunately still a hassle. I did finally vote this time because the stakes felt higher, and because for once I had the time and resources (2 days and hundreds of dollars, plus a two-week buffer in case I needed to quarantine afterwards) to fly from the middle of the US to the embassy in Washington DC and back to do it. The current arrangements effectively make voting a luxury for many overseas Singaporeans. Voting—having a say in the future of a country that is still very much part of us and that we care for deeply—shouldn't be a luxury.
—ZF
Their fragrance takes me home to Singapore
When I saw that Singapore's General Election was happening this year, I looked up how I could vote from my country of residence, Germany. I was sad to realize that there was no way for me to vote unless I traveled to one of the ten overseas voting locations. The only one in Europe is in London, UK. I have no plans to travel by plane this year, since I reside in the same house as my parents-in-law, who are in a vulnerable group due to their age or existing health conditions.
The photo is from my vegetable garden showing some coriander in bloom. The leaves are a frequent star in dishes in my kitchen. It is one way I stay connected to my roots. The blossoms are edible as well and their fragrance takes me home to Singapore, where I can enjoy some chicken rice with those I love.
—SS
Coriander from SS’s vegetable garden in Germany: “The leaves are a frequent star in dishes in my kitchen.”
We are adding new stories as they come in. We'd like to collate the personal stories of overseas Singaporeans who face various challenges in exercising their right to vote in GE2020. We hope that these stories will help explain to the authorities and fellow Singaporeans why the present situation must change, if not in time for this election, then for the next one. Please send your stories to Jee Leong at jkoh@singaporeunbound.org. The stories should focus on the logistical, geographical, pandemic-related, and other challenges of voting, and not on the criticism of any political parties in Singapore. You may provide your real name, your initials, or a pseudonym. You may also send a photo (with caption) of your life in your overseas location or of your relationship to voting this year. Thank you. Singapore Unbound is a literary non-profit based in NYC, powered by Singaporean volunteers. https://singaporeunbound.org/
The following articles and video from other media platforms also reflect the experiences of overseas voters:
1. The Online Citizen: Overseas, and unable to vote
2. Medium: Voting Needs to be Made More Accessible for Overseas Singaporeans
3. Straits Times: Tough for overseas Singaporeans to vote in midst of pandemic
4. Dear Singapore video, compiled by Yong Shuling
