• If voting for only one candidate mark X
• In voting preferences mark as 1 & 2 or 1 & 2 & 3 

The Election Commission (EC) emphasised education of the voter on how to vote correctly in order to ensure that the elector’s vote is counted at the 2024 Presidential Election on 21 September.

“There are several ways a voter can cast his or her vote,” the Commissioner General of Elections, Saman Sri Ratnayake said at a press conference yesterday (18). “They can put an X mark in front of a candidate’s name if they plan on voting for only one candidate. If they plan on voting for more than one candidate, they can put their first preference as 1, their second as 2 and if they have a third preference, they can mark it as 3.” Voters who cast two or more X marks in front of two candidate’s names will have cast an invalid vote. Similarly, those who put an X in front of one candidate’s name and put 2 and 3 in front of the other candidates’ name will also have cast an invalid vote. Casting a fourth preference would also be invalid.

“We want all voters to be educated as they head to the Poll in order to make sure that each and every vote counts,” Ratnayake said. “This is why we have published educational material telling people how to vote properly.”

In the 2019 Presidential Election, the EC confirmed that there were 13,387,951 votes cast, however, only 82.87% of votes or 13,252,499 votes were valid. There were 0.85% of votes or 135,452 votes that were declared invalid. In the 2024 Presidential race, the country has approximately 17.1 million voters with approximately one million first-time voters, who will head to the Poll to elect the ninth Executive President of the country. Currently, 38 candidates stand in the running to become Sri Lanka’s President.