Democrat Leader Claims Rigged Senate Election, Demands Ballot Audit
Democrat Party leader Colonel Tawee alleges a rigged 2017 Thai Senate election orchestrated by the "Huay Swa" network, claiming 1,200 coordinated members were drilled to vote using pre-locked templates and calls for urgent ballot audits to
Police Colonel Tawee, leader of the Democrat Party, has exposed a systematic fraud scheme allegedly orchestrated by the 'Huay Swa' network during Thailand's 2017 Senate selection process. On July 14, 2025, he posted on Facebook calling for ballot and vote verification to expose corruption and restore electoral integrity. According to Tawee, the network exploited a loophole in election commission regulations that permitted candidates to use identical identification numbers throughout the national-level selection held at Impact Muang Thong Thani on June 26, 2017, during both the morning profession-group voting and afternoon cross-group voting sessions. He argues this directly violated Article 33 of the 2017 Constitutional Act governing Senate member selection, which mandates secret ballot voting.
Tawee alleges that immediately after candidates received national identification numbers on June 18, 2017, the network used mathematical calculations to pre-lock vote outcomes. They allegedly used the candidate numbers assigned by the election commission to identify 140 individuals destined for Senate membership and created voting templates ('polls') on June 23-24. Between June 24-25, the network allegedly gathered approximately 1,200 network members who had passed provincial screening and provided them with inducements or influence, housing them in closed hotel facilities across 4-5 provinces. Members were drilled to vote according to pre-locked templates with two versions (Poll A and Poll B) containing 20 groups of seven numbers each, with five duplicate numbers for voting precision. All network members allegedly wore identical yellow polo shirts with matching symbols on election day to blend in with officials, ultimately resulting in 138 network members entering the Senate.
Tawee argues that the critical step to uncover the truth is opening and forensically verifying ballot boxes, a task he says should be undertaken urgently by both the election commission and the Department of Special Investigation. He contends that ballots should become forensic and applied mathematical evidence to prove that votes resulted not from free will and secret balloting, but from coordinated voting following predetermined templates. In the morning voting round involving 2,998 Senate candidates, each voter was required to select 10 candidates from their profession group, including themselves. However, Tawee claims that upon ballot verification, patterns emerged showing 12 to 25 ballots in single boxes with identical numbers selected in the same sequence, with no self-votes. He asserts that mathematically and statistically, the probability of independent voters randomly selecting identical numbers in identical order is zero—more unlikely than winning the national lottery jackpot.