Some 458,000 Bangladesh expatriates have so far cast their voters through the postal ballots in the upcoming referendum and the national election scheduled for February 12 next.

“As of 11:30am on Saturday (January 31), a total of 458,059 expatriate voters completed their voting process and of them, 410,928 ballot papers have been dropped in post offices and post boxes in different countries across the world,” said Brig Gen (retd) Saleem Ahmad Khan, Team Leader of the Election Commission’s OCV-ICPV project.

He said a total of 766,862 postal ballots reached different destinations throughout the world for Out-of-Country Voting (OCV) and of them, 518,345 ballots have already been received by the registered expatriates in various countries.

The Election Commission has already received as many as 144,860 returned ballots as of Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, the Commission has sent some 518,603 ballots to different destinations under the In-Country Postal Voting (ICPV) since the distribution of the postal ballots started on Monday last.

Among the ballots, only 7,367 ones have so far been received by the registered voters and 4,902 voters cast their votes. Of them, 2,394 ballots were dropped in the post boxes or post offices.

The EC, headed by Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin, introduced the IT-supported hybrid postal balloting system with the combination of digital registration and manual balloting for the first time in the country for the expatriate Bangladeshis living in more than 120 foreign countries.

The Commission also is using the new postal balloting system for the government employees working outside their respective constituencies, the polling personnel and the people under legal custody inside Bangladesh.