3,500 voters over 100 years old in Sabah

As of Dec 31 last year, a total of 848,473 people have registered as voters in Sabah.

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Election Commission (EC), which is still verifying the status of some 3,500 registered voters aged over 100 in the state, will retain “active” centenarians in its electoral rolls.

State EC chairman Md Idrus Ismail said the commission is verifying with the National Registration Department (NRD) whether those centenarians are still “active”.

He said those who are verified as “inactive” will be struck off the electoral rolls.

He added that this is in line with the nationwide programme announced by EC chairman, Abdul Aziz Yusof, recently to clean up the rolls of dubious voters.

Responding to recent statements by PKR Sabah and DAP on the matter, Idrus said the 3,500 names of centenarian voters were collated from the state electoral rolls over the last few months.

He said ridding the electoral rolls of “inactive” and dubious voters is an on-going process nationwide.

He said it wil take quite a while to obtain verification from the NRD on the status of the centenarian voters.

“We cannot expect to obtain the verification and strike out the inactive voters overnight. It will take some time,” said Idrus.

However, he believes that some of the centenarians are alive and active.

“We are verifying their status with NRD because the department is responsible in issuing the death certificates,” he said in response to the PKR Sabah deputy chairperson Christina Liew’s statement that more than 200 voters here are between 100 and 120 years old.

Liew, who is also Kota Kinabalu PKR division chairperson, said that the party has brought the matter up with the state EC for verification but the officials claimed that they cannot do anything unless the family members of the registered voters come forward to rectify the matter

Report deaths

According to EC record, as of Dec 31 last year, a total of 848,473 people have registered as voters in Sabah.

Abdul Aziz, in his recent statement, said that those aged above 90 and “considered” to be “inactive” will be struck off in line with the effort to clean up the roll, which is updated every three months.

To date, some 12,000 names have been removed, thanks to the collaboration with NRD on the voters’ status.

He said the NRD would, among others, study their movements as well as correspondence before classifying them as inactive.

However, in cases where those struck off the list reappeared, the EC would re-upload their names on the roll.

The commission’s database, which mirrors that of the NRD, does not allow removal of names unless it was done by the department, which could only do so when families of the deceased come forward to report the death.

However, under the EC’s own initiative, names of those aged above 120 are automatically removed.