Army men registered as female voters and vice-versa

About two dozen spouses of army officers have been found to have registered under the identity card (IC) numbers of their army husbands and wives, revealed Rasah DAP parliamentarian Anthony Loke.

According to details of postal voters in the Rasah Malaysian Armed Forces Camp found on the Election Commission's (EC) website, 19 spouses of male army personnel are registered under their husband's IC numbers as postal voters.

“They use the ordinary ICs of their husband to register but under the wives' names - a wife could still have the ordinary voter's right so she might be able to vote twice,” exclaimed Loke in a press conference called to reveal the discrepancies.

“The IC numbers definitely belong to men as these numbers are odd numbers, while female IC numbers are even numbers, and this clearly states that she is a voter in Rasah in the army camp,” said Loke.

For example, Noor Atikah Zakaria holds a male's MyKad, 840306-02-5561, and the army officer believed to be her husband, Mohd Hasbullah Abdul Wahab, has an army MyKad, T1140868 - where both are registered with the same date of birth, locality and voting district.

“All these are new registrations, it can't just be a normal mistake. The roll has been updated so 19 incidents in one constituency can't be a mere coincidence,” said Loke.

In another two cases, husbands of two female army personnel were registered under the ordinary MyKad numbers of their female spouses.

“NM Ezwanee Mat Isa with the IC number 830902-05-5290, the last four digits being even number codes used for females, while his wife, Norlianiza Abu, is registered as a voter with the army personnel with the army IC number T5005217,” said Loke (left), whose constituency has more than 2,600 postal votes as of the second quarter of this year.

The 21 discrepancies detected could just be the tip of the iceberg, said Loke, urging for the “complete overhaul” of the electoral roll.

He also said that the ongoing exposure of disparities in the electoral roll has intensified the demands of various election watchdog groups for a revamp in the system.

Loke said that the amendment to the election rules last year which permitted spouses of armed forces personnel to be registered as postal voters opened up a can of worms as constituencies could potentially see postal votes doubling.

“This is not confined to my constituency. We have evidence in Rasah but also know it happens in Rembau, the great (Umno Youth chief) Khairy Jamaluddin's constituency which we will scan through next,” he added.

'Yuzina married to Yuniza'

Another glaring example, he said, was the registration of an army personnel known as Yuzina Nodin married to another female named Yuniza Nodin, who both had the same date of birth and surnames.

“I'm not sure if Malaysia has passed legislation allowing for same sex marriage or whether the Malaysian army is so open that it has allowed same sex marriage,” he mocked.

Loke added that the credibility of postal votes practice is still murky as political parties' polling agents could not enter army camps when votes are cast to observe the process.

“Each registered postal voter will be issued a postal ballot, and the polling agents are only with the EC polling officers when the ballots are issued. Beyond that, who uses it or who votes, nobody can check.”

Last month, Malaysiakini had reported on a case where an individual named Mismah - who was initially listed as a PR holder but was included on the latest update to the country's electoral rolls.

Within hours after the exposé, her status was however changed to full citizenship on the National Registration Department's (NRD) website.

The EC cited a mere technical glitch, blaming the NRD for not updating its on-line database regularly as Mismah had supposedly received her citizenship in January.

EC chief Abdul Aziz Yusof, although admitting to the occurrence of glitches in their system, played down the impact by claiming that the mistakes only represented 0.0001 percent of the total of 12.4 million registered voters.

Yesterday, the Johor DAP had alleged that the electoral roll for the Ledang parliamentary constituency had serious flaws as there over 400 voters whose names are missing from the NRD's database but appear as voters in the constituency, which is held by Umno's Hamim Samuri.

“When the new electoral role is released we are given only one week to raise objections. We found this out last week but the objection period has already passed,” Loke said.

He added that they will be taking their complaints to the EC once the party's workers have completed identifying other mismatched identities and problems.