About 96 per cent of expatriate voters from 20 countries, including Saudi Arabia, cast their ballots through the postal voting system in the 13th parliamentary election and referendum, Election Commission (EC) officials said, reports BSS.
Election Commissioner Brig Gen (retd) Abul Fazal Md Sanaullah said the high turnout indicates that expanding voter registration and National Identity (NID) services in those countries could further strengthen the postal voting system in the future.
According to EC data, a total of 7, 67,233 expatriate voters from 123 countries registered to cast their ballots through the "Postal Vote BD" app.
Of them, 2, 37,569 voters are from Saudi Arabia, accounting for around 35 percent of the total expatriate voters, EC officials said.
They added that there remains significant potential to increase the number of expatriate voters in Saudi Arabia. If proper initiatives are taken to expand voter registration there, nearly half of the expatriate voters could come from Saudi Arabia alone in the future.
Officials also said around 75 per cent of voters applied from 10 countries, which have been identified as key focus areas for improving the postal voting system.
Under the Out of Country Voting (OCV) System Development and Implementation (SDI) Project, Team Leader Salim Ahmad Khan told BSS that 5,44,380 expatriate voters cast their ballots out of the 767,233 registered voters through the Postal Vote BD app.
"This means around 70.95 per cent of registered expatriate voters exercised their franchise through postal ballots," he said.
According to him, returning officers received 498,266 postal ballots from expatriates, which is about 65 percent of the total expatriate votes. Of these, 498,205 ballots were accepted as valid votes.
Salim Ahmad Khan said around 96 percent of expatriate voters from 20 countries applied for postal voting, while nearly 75 percent of voters from another 10 countries also submitted applications.
"These countries are our focus areas. We need to develop a structured system to keep these countries within the postal voting framework in the coming years," he said.
