Over 700,000 votes cast at Wednesday’s parliamentary election were rejected, a steep rise from the less than 140,000 rejected votes cast at last November’s presidential election.
The final election result released by the Election Commission showed that 744,373 or 4.58 % of the 75.89 % of the total votes polled were rejected. This is in comparison to the 135,452 or 0.85% of votes rejected at the presidential election.
The turnout at Wednesday’s election was close to 76 %, way better than the 71% announced by the EC on Wednesday.
Of the 16,263,885 registered voters, 12,343,309 cast their votes, of which 11,598,936 were valid votes.
The SLPP won 6,853,693 or 59.89 % of the votes , a shortfall of around 70,000 votes when compared to the 6,924,255 that the Party’s candidate President Gotabaya Rajapaksa secured at November’s presidential poll.
The SBJ led by Sajith Premadasa secured 2,771,984 or 23.98 % of the vote. In the presidential election, Premadasa who contested on the National Democratic Front (NDF) ticket with the backing of the UNP secured 5,564,239 votes. The tally for Wednesday’s election shows a drop of 2,792,255 votes.
The JVP led alliance NPP won 445,958 or 3.84 % of the vote, a slight increase from the 418,553 votes the Party leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake secured as the presidential candidate.
The ITAK won 327,168 or 2.82 per cent of the votes in the Northern and eastern provinces it contested in while the UNP won only 249,435 or 2.15 % of the vote.