Fake & Misleading Postal Vote Results – SL Presidential Elections
දිනපතා සත්ය කරුණු දැන ගැනීමට අපගේ WhatsApp චැනලයටමෙතනින් එකතුවන්න.
As millions of Sri Lankans anxiously awaited the release of official presidential election results, many speculative result cards started making rounds on social media. Moreover, even the first postal vote result released by the Election Commission had an error, which was corrected minutes later.
Let’s look at the misleading posts making rounds on social circles.
Social Media Posts
Social media posts claiming to be unofficial results stated that the Ratnapura district postal vote was won by Anura Kumara with 15,100 votes, followed by Sajith Premadasa, who secured 9,790 votes, pushing Ranil Wickremasinghe to third place, as seen below.
Image of the results from a live TV broadcast also made rounds, which showed that while Anura Kumara easily topped the polls in Ratnapura postal votes, second place was Sajith and Namal Rajapaksa at the 3rd place, as seen below.
Fact-Check
The first official result of the 2024 presidential election was the postal vote of Ratnapura district, released around 11.30 pm on 21st September. When some of the major television channels reported the official result, it indicated that Anura Kumara Dissanayake got the highest votes, with Sajith Premadasa a distant second and Namal Rajapaksa in third place. A notable exclusion was Ranil Wickremasinghe, who was not even among the top six candidates!
However, the omission of Ranil Wickremasinghe was corrected minutes later, and the final official result confirmed by the Election Commission for the Ratnaputa postal vote stated that while Anura Kumara comfortably won the Ratnapura postal votes with 19,185 votes (60.83%), Ranil Wickramasinghe took second place with 6,641 votes (21.06%), pushing Sajith Premadasa to the third place with 4,675 votes (14.82%)
Info Dept Elect Commission Postal vote
While it was stated that a technical glitch caused this error, and even though all the TV channels re-announced the correct result, many social media posts had already shared the much-anticipated vote result of Ratnapura district and continued to go viral on social media.
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