Chatchawan, People's Party candidate for Khon Kaen's District 3, has petitioned the Election Commission to conduct a full recount after detecting suspicious early voting and spoiled ballot figures, with some candidates' votes jumping from hundreds to thousands.
At 13:45 on 9 Feb 2026 GMT+7, at the People's Party office in Khon Kaen's District 3, Wang Chai Subdistrict Municipal Market, Nam Phong District, Khon Kaen Province, Chatchawan Apirakmankong, candidate number 4, revealed that after the polls closed on 8 Feb 2026 GMT+7, vote checking uncovered irregularities in early voting registration outside the district and abroad. Around 6,000 people registered, but only approximately 4,900 ballots were received. The shortfall of about 1,000 ballots is under investigation to determine if these voters did not vote or if registration errors caused the missing ballots.
Another issue concerns spoiled ballots. After reviewing all votes in the district yesterday, about 4,000 spoiled ballots were found in District 3. The total vote count shows a margin of around 300 to 400 votes for the leading candidate, indicating the possibility that spoiled ballots may have been misjudged by polling station officials. Therefore, they are requesting a complete recount in District 3, as spoiled ballots could be decisive in this election.
Regarding some candidates' vote numbers suddenly increasing, after awaiting official updated results until 2 a.m., officials wrote the total votes on the board. It was noticed that one candidate's votes unusually jumped from around 900 to over 9,000 votes, raising suspicion. This discrepancy was challenged on social media, after which the results were removed and corrected back to the hundreds. Such an error should not have occurred as it caused differences of tens of thousands of votes. This has raised concerns and led to the call for the Election Commission to conduct a recount.
Chatchawan added that he is currently awaiting a formal letter from the People's Party to file an objection and request the Election Commission to conduct a full vote recount.