Fraud

A voter from Rangoon Division who spoke to Burma Election Tracker said: "Before the election, Lion (USDP), Fighting Peacocks (UMFNP and GSUM), Bamboo hat (NDF) and individual candidates canvassed for votes. I didn't go back home. I didn't vote because authority collected advance votes at early one month and I was late. I didn't cast vote. I'm unhappy because I can't vote for the party I like. I watched when I was waiting at the bus near the polling station. I didn't see clearly because of the distance. There was no intimidation. Campaign songs were playing at every single polling station.

A voter from Rangoon Division who spoke to Burma Election Tracker said: "I heard that the election will be held on November 7th, 2010 and that the authorities made National Registration Cards for free before election. I didn't go back home and there's no difference if I'm at home or not. I want to abstain. They will do whatever they want to do if I vote. When I say 'they', I mean the USDP. I didn't hear about the security conditions of our village and of any threat on our family. There were many members of the USDP in our village.

A voter explained to Burma Election Tracker how they were not able to vote during the election: "When I went to vote I was not on the voter list. I felt upset about this. I didn't go and talk to the head of village however, because I was not interested that much in the election." | မဲစာရင္းမပါလို ့မဲမေပးသျဖင့္စိတ္ထဲတြင္ကသိကေအာင့္ျဖစ္ရပါသည္။ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအားစိတ္၀င္စားမႈသိပ္မရွိေသာေၾကာင့္ရြာလူၾကီးလည္းသြားမေျပာေတာ့ပါ။

A Karen citizen spoke of intimidation during the voting process to Burma Election Tracker: "I was at home but heard the election news by broadcast. I voted for USDP. The polling station was not a secure place while voting. I felt like I was closely watched all the time. I would not feel safe for my family if I did not vote for USDP. Many people were watching when I cast my vote. Some people were taking photos, but they looked like they were trying to stay unnoticed. There was some intimidation. Some USDP members were there also. Security officers were in civilian clothes.

A Mon state citizen was interviewed by Burma Election Tracker and described voter intimidation and a lack of confidence in the election:

During interview with a Karen state citizen, Burma Election Tracker was told: "The USDP asked the population and said they will come again to provide voting ballots but they didn't, so we had to vote in advance. Everyone was unhappy and not interested on this election. There were many security officers in the village.

Burma Election Tracker conducted the following interview with a Citizen from Rangoon division after the election, where a number of election issues such as fraud, access to polling stations and miscounting of votes were raised:

Scattered across the steep fields, villagers toil with the daily chores of upland rice farming. Women in traditional Karenni costume transport goods in bamboo baskets on their backs while their children play in the fields. There’s very little to suggest that today millions of Burmese voters will take to the polls for the first election in 20 years.

A voter from Arakan State who spoke to Burma Election Tracker said:"I'm a member of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) and voted for my party. There were many biases in the election campaign. There was a prohibition to campaign in religious buildings such as: monasteries and chapels, but we could campaign in ward-chapels located away from monasteries. Campaigners were not allowed to use loudspeaker and only allowed to use a sound box, but the USDP could get around all prohibitions.

A voter from Arakan State who spoke to Burma Election Tracker said: "During the campaigning period, the USDP said to 40 Muslim people that if they voted for the USDP, they would get help to get visas for other countries. But the Muslim people voted for the Kamar National Development Party. The USDP refused them not only the visas but also the documents for domestic travel. Finally the USDP won the Election."