SINGAPORE - About 50,000 public servants are being appointed as election officials, the Elections Department (ELD) said on March 8.

“Training for election officials will commence in April 2024,” an ELD spokesman said in response to queries.

“All public officers who are appointed as election officials will be required to undergo training to ensure they are equipped to perform their duties effectively.”

Checks by The Straits Times showed that staff from various ministries and statutory boards, such as the Ministry of Law, Ministry of Communications and Information and National Parks Board, and school teachers had over the past week been notified of upcoming election duties.

Some public servants received their e-mail appointment as early as Feb 29 and as recently as March 8, they told ST on condition of anonymity.

One teacher, who was deployed in the 2023 Presidential Election, received her notice on March 3. The e-mail contained instructions to log in to a website for election officials with her Singpass, so as to complete the onboarding process.

It also said she had been assigned mobile election training modules on the website.

Public servants who are deployed in an election can be assigned to one of several roles. These include counting assistants, presiding officers, senior presiding officers, assistant returning officers or senior assistant returning officers.

A large number will become presiding officers, who are stationed at polling stations to usher and register voters.

A new round of election official training should not be viewed as a sign that an election is imminent, given the lengthy gap between the two in past elections.

Public servants were called up for training about 31 months before the 2011 General Election, while the timeframe was about 11 months for the one held in 2015.

For the 2020 General Election, officers were notified of their election duties in July 2018, about 24 months before Singaporeans went to the polls.

ELD’s spokesman said on March 8 that public officers are appointed and trained on an ongoing basis to perform election duties, to prepare the public service to conduct elections in Singapore.

Past election training have included e-learning, classroom workshops and simulated exercises on nomination, polling and counting processes, though this varied depending on one’s assigned role.

A veteran public servant who was deployed in the 2023 Presidential Election and 2015 General Election recounted how her training in the lead-up to the presidential election took place entirely online, and consisted of a long deck of slides and videos detailing the different roles and responsibilities of officials.

But she was aware of others who had to attend face-to-face training. In 2015, the training was held in person at the Elections Department premises, she said.

An increasing number of public servants have been called up for election duty over the years. This is as the number of polling stations has risen to ensure smoother queues and shorter waits to cast one’s ballot.

About 20,000 public servants were called up ahead of the 2006 General Election. For the one in 2011, about 28,000 were called up. Some 30,000 public servants were notified for the general elections in 2015 and 2020.

About 36,000 were deployed in the 2023 Presidential Election.

Ground chatter about when the next election will take place has been fuelled by Budget 2024, which saw the Government disburse a mix of cash, vouchers and rebates to Singaporeans under a $1.9 billion boost to the Assurance Package.

This included extending the popular Community Development Council Vouchers Scheme for another year, with households to get an additional $600 in vouchers by January 2025.

The next general election has to be called no later than November 2025, but there are signs of political activities being ramped up on the ground.

Several potential new faces from the People’s Action Party and Workers’ Party have been spotted out and about, while parties such as the Progress Singapore Party and Singapore Democratic Party have been holding walkabouts.

The lead-up to an election will see voter rolls, which contain the names of all Singaporean citizens eligible to vote in that election, be updated. An Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) will also be convened and tasked with reviewing the boundaries of the existing electoral divisions.

In a written reply to a parliamentary question on Feb 6, Minister-in-charge of the Public Service Chan Chun Sing said the EBRC has not been convened.