Special Report: What Voters Say About Election Integrity in Việt Nam During the 2021 Elections

In 2021, for two months, Luật Khoa Magazine gathered documents and testimonies from voters, witnesses, and election organizers across several provinces and cities across the country. These accounts highlight the issue of proxy voting and other irregularities during the elections in Việt Nam.

Of the nine individuals interviewed by Luật Khoa Magazine, six witnessed or participated in proxy voting during the 2021 election. Among the remaining three, one was encouraged by polling officials to engage in proxy voting, another had family members who participated, and the last took part in proxy voting during the 2016 election.

Witnesses to proxy voting shared a common observation. They noted that a single person could hand a stack of voter cards to polling officials in exchange for multiple ballots without facing any reprimand, punishment, or questioning.

This practice of proxy voting violates Article 69 of the 2015 Election Law. [1] Furthermore, these legal provisions have remained largely unchanged since the 1997 Election Law. [2]

The identities of all witnesses have been concealed to ensure their safety.

Like a Multi-Layered Cake

On the morning of May 23, 2021, B. woke early to line up and vote at a polling station in North Từ Liêm, Hà Nội.

“I saw the man ahead of me hand over three voter cards, but [the election officials] didn’t ask, ‘Are you voting on behalf of others?’ Instead, they distributed three ballots for each voter card in a sequence of blue, red, yellow, blue, red, and yellow, resembling a nine-layered cake.

The ballot-marking table featured four partitioned stations but lacked a coordinator, causing voters to crowd together. Left with almost no place to sit, B. and others resorted to crossing out names wherever possible—on the ground, on walls, on their thighs, and even on each other’s backs. Consequently, many voters exposed the information on their ballots, whether intentionally or not.

“Some people asked, ‘So how do we cross this out?’ Others said they would wait for relatives to mark theirs first and then copy. People just wanted to finish quickly and drop the ballot into the box,” B. recalled.

This casual approach to the voting process was echoed by S., a witness at another polling station in Hà Nội. S. noted that her family’s voter cards were stapled together by the household. When her mother presented the entire stack on election day, she was simply handed a matching stack of ballots. While S. marked her own, her mother voted on behalf of her older sister, who had stayed home. Although her mother suspected proxy voting was improper, she did not realize it explicitly violated election law.

A similar situation occurred with K. in Quảng Ninh, where her mother voted for both her father and younger brother.

“My father said he had sinus problems and wanted to avoid COVID, so he asked my mother to vote for him. My younger brother had never voted before and didn’t understand why he should go. My parents didn’t insist.”

Across these accounts, witnesses noted that many citizens did not see the importance of the elections and willingly outsourced their vote. Those who voted on behalf of relatives usually did so just to “get it done.” 

Most participants in proxy voting remained entirely unaware that their actions were illegal—a misconception heavily reinforced by the active cooperation of election officials. In certain instances, witnesses reported that the election organizers themselves performed the proxy voting.

The “Kind” Neighborhood Chief

For B., a voter in North Từ Liêm, Hà Nội, the 2021 election was his second time participating. His first experience in 2016 sparked his initial interest in observing the process closely, driven by prevalent rumors of proxy voting.

“Back then I voted in another area—it was even worse,” B. explained. “Many renters there told the neighborhood chief to vote for them. They were busy working to make a living. They didn’t care who represented them. The neighborhood chief had a very thick stack of voter cards.”

A similar dynamic played out for H. in Nghĩa Đô, Cầu Giấy, Hà Nội. In previous years, his family routinely surrendered their voter cards to the neighborhood chief, who would cast ballots on their behalf. In 2021, H. intended to change his polling location but missed the registration deadline, leading to a confrontation with local leadership.

“The neighborhood chief said if I wasn’t in Nghĩa Đô on election day, I could leave the ballots with him or my family to vote. I said, ‘No, my voter card is mine to keep. I can’t give it to someone else to vote for me.’”

Despite H.’s objections, the chief remained persistent. “He kept insisting, ‘That’s allowed,’ and told me that if I didn’t vote, I should give him my voter card […] He said, ‘That’s your card. The number issued must match the number collected,’” H. recounted.

H. refused to hand over the card and submitted a blank ballot on election day. Ironically, he still ended up participating in proxy voting. Driven by COVID-19 concerns, he voted on behalf of the sick family members to prevent them from having to go out, fearing that local officials would pressure his family or demand the return of their unused voter cards if they failed to participate.

“If Someone is Sick? Just Vote for Them—It’s Fine”

In Hoàng Mai District, Hà Nội, N. encountered a different situation. Prior to election day, while collecting voter cards, N. expressed concern that his mother, who suffers from heart disease, might not be able to vote due to the extreme heat and the risks associated with COVID-19.

“Well, if your mother has heart disease and it’s hot, you can vote on her behalf,” an official casually replied, according to N.

N. pointed out, “That’s against the law.”

“Oh, that’s normal—no one pays attention,” the official responded.

Despite this explicit encouragement to break the law, N. insisted on bringing his mother to vote in person on election day. N. was one of only three witnesses interviewed who did not participate in or observe proxy voting. However, his absence was primarily because his polling station was virtually empty.

N. noted a glaring indifference among the public regarding both the elections and the candidates. This sentiment was perfectly summarized as he departed the station: “When I was leaving, I asked the security guard, and he said, ‘What voting? Who even cares who they are?’”

Lack of Information Leads Young Voters to “Choose Randomly”

For L., a young voter witness in Bình Dương, the 2021 election was his first opportunity to cast a ballot. Unlike many of his peers, he researched the process carefully beforehand, though he quickly encountered systemic barriers.

“I noticed voter meetings weren’t widely publicized and mostly invited older residents. I had to call the city People’s Committee chairman myself after finding the number in a directory just to learn when and where a meeting would take place,” L. explained. 

His effort, however, proved underwhelming. “Nothing surprising happened there. The action plans were very general—it was challenging to imagine what they would actually contribute. Only one candidate spoke in detail; others said vague things that even young people could say.”

On election day, L. voted at a station located inside his dormitory. While he noted that the organization was orderly, turnout remained low due to widespread apathy and ignorance about the candidates.

“Most students didn’t really understand the candidates. They voted randomly rather than voting on behalf of others. I didn’t see much interest except from two female students. I shared information with them so they could decide, but many others chose not to vote at all because they lacked information.”

L. did not personally witness or participate in proxy voting at his dormitory, but he was familiar with the practice. Back in his hometown, proxy voting was treated as a mundane reality. “At home, my father voted for my mother. Some acquaintances told me, ‘We vote just for fun—we don’t even know who they are.’”

Driven by these pervasive accounts of voter apathy and administrative irregularities, Luật Khoa Magazine sought to better understand how these elections are managed on the ground. To do so, the editorial board contacted two special witnesses: one who directly participated in organizing the elections and another whose relative served on a local election team.

Election Guidance

C. serves as a particularly notable witness. While she did not participate in the 2021 election, she acted as both a voter and a member of the election organization and vote-counting teams during the 2016 election.

“I was a youth union member and the granddaughter of a neighborhood chief, so naturally I was invited to voter meetings and youth activities. I was also part of the counting team,” she said.

C. recalled attending an event titled “Young Voters and Elections,” where a representative from the Fatherland Front detailed election procedures. Despite his claims of neutrality, the bias was apparent. “The funny part was that he insisted it wasn’t election guidance but then listed five candidates and said three were promising while the other two—one too young and one female […] I could clearly sense his intention,” C. said.

This type of election guidance manifested in other forms as well. During the 2021 election, Facebook posts alleged that students at Quang Trung High School in Hà Đông, Hà Nội, were explicitly instructed to share content unfavorable to candidate Lương Thế Huy. 

Screenshots revealed the messages dictating, “Class officials instruct students to share this content on their personal pages and submit screenshots to the school.” Subsequent screenshots from student accounts displayed confirmation messages such as “Class 10D5 completed” or “10D4 submitted.” 

Serious questions arose about whether the school was pressuring students to spread political messaging through these organized campaigns.

Furthermore, this guidance was not restricted to young voters. M., a resident of Thanh Xuân, Hà Nội, explained that each household in his area received an A3 sheet listing the candidates. Officials directly guided attendees at a local neighborhood meeting on which candidates they should cross out.

“My mother marked the A3 sheet in advance so she wouldn’t forget when voting,” M. noted. Although his family did not engage in proxy voting, they still witnessed other voters depositing multiple ballots into the ballot box.

Manufacturing the Count

For C., the irregularities of the 2016 election extended beyond the voting booths and straight into the counting room. Earlier that day, she had noticed individuals holding more than four ballots, even though there were only four election levels. She left shortly after, assuming her duties were over.

“In the evening, someone from the team told me, ‘Come help tonight.’ That’s when I realized I was part of the counting team,” C. recalled.

Inside, the vote-sorting process was remarkably efficient and quick. A team of more than ten people split into two groups, sorting ballots by color and then placing them into baskets based on marking patterns. C. was assigned to manage the basket of invalid ballots. 

However, the situation escalated when a woman acting as a supervisor arrived. Right in front of this supervisor, another counting member reached into C.’s basket, altered a handful of invalid ballots with new markings, and transferred them to the valid baskets.

When C. objected, stating, “These are invalid ballots,” the woman simply ignored her and continued marking names.

Meanwhile, the supervisor shut C. down, telling her, “That’s not your concern.”

“No one objected. Everyone was busy and paid no attention,” C. said.

This blatant tampering appeared to stem from an intense pressure to report high participation figures, a metric used to project unity and consensus. 

“If a polling unit finished voting by 1 p.m., they would loudly celebrate meeting targets,” C. observed. “That excitement felt strange. Meeting quotas held greater significance than the actual ballots cast by the voters. As long as the number matched the voter list, they were satisfied. Finish early, go home early.”

T., another witness who engaged in proxy voting in 2016, had his entire understanding of the electoral process shaped by his father, an election team member in Thái Nguyên during the 2007 election.

“My father was a retired party secretary at a state agency. Because he was trusted, he received verbal instructions that turnout must not fall below 95%, and polling teams had to ensure this by adding ballots,” T. said. “He told me, ‘They had to stuff extra ballots for Mạnh.’ He only dared tell me years later.”

Because T.’s father passed away in 2015, Luật Khoa Magazine has not been able to independently verify this specific account.

Proxy Voting in Hà Nội Since 1997

Based on decades of Vietnamese media coverage, one might assume election fraud is rare. Indeed, one of the few publicly exposed cases involved a commune People’s Council chairman in Hà Nội who was caught swapping 75 ballots during the 2021 election. [3]

However, proxy voting is a deeply entrenched practice. More than 20 years ago, foreign researcher David Wee Hock Koh documented this phenomenon in his book Wards of Hanoi. [4] 

While observing the Hà Nội elections on July 20, 1997, Koh noted that despite the 1997 Election Law requiring in-person voting, individuals routinely carried two or three voter cards and received validation stamps for all of them. 

In one case, a woman was handed eight ballots for a single-level election. “She was given eight ballots by a registration official without a single question,” Koh wrote.

Koh concluded that the situation was “common practice across wards in Hà Nội.” An acquaintance who monitored elections in the 1980s confessed to Koh that he had never personally cast a ballot, nor had he ever faced reprimand. Likewise, in the 2004 People’s Council election, friends said they wouldn’t vote because their families would.

To illustrate the scale of the issue, Koh calculated the mathematical speed of the 1997 turnout. 

He noted that if the 37% voter turnout in that ward corresponded to 6,500 voters (based on figures provided by district officials at the time of his observation), that would amount to 2,405 ballots cast within 60 minutes—roughly 40 voters per minute overall, or about 10 voters per minute at each of the four polling stations. 

Koh further estimated that one in five voters engaged in proxy voting, adjusting the real turnout to around 79%, a figure comparable to elections in the former Soviet Union. 

This tolerance for proxy voting allowed authorities to manufacture high turnout quickly, while voters stayed home, believing their participation mattered little due to pre-selection and limited candidate choices.

Koh suggested this systemic fraud predates 1989, referencing a Hà Nội Mới article on the Fatherland Front’s role in candidate selection. 

He also pointed to the 1992 National Assembly election, where midday turnout supposedly reached 75% in Hà Nội and Hải Phòng, 87% in Thừa Thiên–Huế, and an astounding 95% in Khánh Hòa. 

Given the logistical constraints of the era, Koh argued such numbers were “impossible unless voters moved like canned fish on an assembly line,” requiring ballots to be cast in as little as two seconds per voter.

Việt Nam’s population has surged from about 77 million in 1997 to roughly 98 million in 2021. [5] Despite this massive growth, midday turnout in 2021 continued to hit mathematically improbable highs, with Điện Biên reporting 85% and Quảng Ninh reporting 84% by noon on May 23. [6]

If Koh’s historical observations laid the groundwork, the modern testimonies collected by Luật Khoa Magazine confirm a bleak reality: proxy voting remains a systematic fixture across multiple provinces and cities today.

Is More Public Education the Solution?

When addressing the issue, officials offered varying explanations. National Assembly delegate Lưu Bình Nhưỡng (Bến Tre) placed the blame on the system, stating, “If this happens, it is because polling teams enable voters to do wrong—they would not do it on their own.”

Conversely, other officials blamed the voters themselves. Nguyễn Túc, a Presidium member of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, argued that citizens’ lack of responsibility, combined with performance pressure and lenient organizers, were the main causes. 

He asserted that proxy voting occurred primarily in remote areas, claiming that major cities like Hà Nội organized elections better due to superior supervision and awareness. 

However, this claim contradicts the evidence, as most proxy voting cases collected by Luật Khoa Magazine actually occurred in the central districts of Hà Nội.

Similarly, National Assembly Secretary General and Chief of the National Election Council Office Bùi Văn Cường attributed the problem to citizens misunderstanding their rights and obligations. 

Noting a lack of legal sanctions against proxy voting, Quảng Trị Vice Chairman Hà Sỹ Đồng argued that public education is the most viable solution, while Túc reiterated the need for stricter supervision.

Yet, one must ask: is educating citizens and supervising organizers truly enough to prevent proxy voting? 

How should the system address the pre-election guidance and post-election ballot alterations committed by the election bodies themselves? 

If proxy voting, uninformed voting, and ballot manipulation have persisted for years, how many current National Assembly and People’s Council deputies genuinely represent the people’s will?

This question remains without a satisfactory answer. Seeking clarification, Luật Khoa Magazine contacted the National Election Council and the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front by email on Monday afternoon, July 19, 2021. As of Tuesday afternoon, July 27, the only reply received was an automated delivery failure notice from the National Assembly’s MAILER-DAEMON@smtp.quochoi.vn on July 24—five days after the initial request was sent.

Law on Elections 2015 – Article 69: Principles of Voting

1. Each voter has the right to cast one ballot for deputies to the National Assembly and one ballot for deputies to the People’s Council corresponding to each level of the People’s Council.
2. Voters must vote in person and may not ask another person to vote on their behalf, except in the cases provided in Clauses 3 and 4 of this Article; when voting, voters must present their voter card.
3. A voter who is unable to write the ballot may ask another person to assist in writing it but must personally cast the ballot; the assisting person must ensure the secrecy of the voter’s ballot. If a voter, due to disability, is unable to personally place the ballot in the box, they may request another person to do so on their behalf.
4. In cases where voters are ill, elderly, or disabled and cannot come to the polling station, the Election Team shall bring a mobile ballot box and ballots to the voter’s residence or place of treatment so that the voter may receive the ballot and vote. For voters who are in temporary detention, serving compulsory education measures, or undergoing compulsory rehabilitation—where no separate polling station is organized—or voters being held in temporary custody facilities, the Election Team shall bring a mobile ballot box and ballots to detention centers, custody houses, compulsory education institutions, or compulsory rehabilitation facilities so that voters may receive ballots and vote.
5. When a voter marks the ballot, no one is permitted to observe, including members of the Election Team.
6. If a ballot is spoiled, the voter has the right to exchange it for another ballot.
7. After a voter has cast their ballot, the Election Team is responsible for stamping “Voted” on the voter card.
8. All persons must comply with the regulations of the polling station.

Penal Code 2015 – Article 161: Offense of Falsifying Election Results or Referendum Results

1. Any person responsible for organizing or supervising elections or referendums who falsifies documents, commits ballot fraud, or uses other methods to distort election or referendum results shall be subject to non-custodial reform for up to two years or imprisonment from three months to two years.
2. If the offense falls under one of the following circumstances, the offender shall be sentenced to imprisonment from one year to three years:
   a) Committed in an organized manner;
   b) Resulting in the need to re-conduct the election or referendum.
3. The offender may also be prohibited from holding certain positions for a period of one to five years.

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The Editorial Board of Luật Khoa Magazine wrote and published this article in Vietnamese on July 27, 2021. Đàm Vĩnh Hằng translated it into English for The Vietnamese Magazine.