Be like a smart phone, EC

If the EC can think as smart as an Andriod smart phone, it will not ask its clerks to key-in every detail of the aspiring voter and then cross-check them with the NRD database.

COMMENT

One thing I love about my Samsung Galaxy SII, my first ever smart phone, is that it synchronises my contact lists. It allows me to merge the details and profiles of my friends and families, from phone, email, Facebook to twitter and what not, all into one. If I update a piece of information from my gmail database, it will get synchronised on phone.

To me, synchronisation of database is essential to contemporary living. You don’t ask me to key in different data for a person in different database and maintain them separately. I have too many things to deal with already. Whichever gadget or software that fails to make my life easier to organise will be on its way out soon.

Now, shouldn’t that be the way how our government organises itself too?

While we do not want an Orwellian big brother to watch over us, we can never be too happy to have one-stop centres to sort out the tedious and mundane details of our transaction with the government.

As the Parliamentary Select Committee on electoral reform was formed yesterday, I cannot help but wonder if we can have an Election Commission (EC) that is a smart as a smart phone.

Remember how Malaysia made a world record when a village, Kampung Baru, can actually acquire a human identity, with gender and birthdate, and become a voter? The EC blamed it on data-entry error.

Remember how Malaysia also made great technological quantum leap in human-cloning with just voter registration? The EC chairperson humbly disowned the achievement by saying that it was “an error in the system”.

How did these errors happen, if we may ask? The EC claimed that after July 16, 2002, voters’ details in the voter registration applications will be cross-checked with the National Registration Department (NRD) database, using the Agency Link-Up System (Alis).

Now, was there a Ms Kg Baru in the NRD database? Otherwise, how can the data-entry error not be spotted? But in the first place, why should the EC data-entry clerks key in the voter details in the first place and not directly call-up the data from the NRD database?

If the EC was smart…

Think of the EC database (electoral roll) as your contact list on your Android smart phone, while the NRD database on your Gmail database. You have known Ms A over email and now you have got her phone number.

Why will you want to key in Ms A’s phone number on your mobile phone and then look up for her contact on your Gmail database to be linked-up?

Why don’t you just update her number on your Gmail database and let the full contact details appear on your smart phone via instant synchronisation?

In short, if the EC can think as smart as an Andriod smart phone, it will not ask its clerks to key-in every detail of the aspiring voter and then cross-check them with the NRD database.

The EC clerk should just key in the person’s NRIC number to call up the relevant details – age, gender, address, what else? – from the NRD database. If the data from the application form and the NRD database match, the data entry is completed. If the details are identical, why store them twice?

Now, why should the citizen need to fill up a voter registration form and the EC clerk need to call up his/her data from the NRD database in the first place?

Why can’t we just have one database dealing with citizenship and voting since the electorate is but a subset of the citizenry? In other words, why can’t the NRD database (citizenry) be treated as the principal database to produce the EC database (electorate) as its subset?

That is what automatic voter registration is all about. It’s not about forcing you to vote. It’s giving you the right to vote anytime you want, if you are qualified. It’s like ATM card that most banks will give to you when you open a savings account. You can use the ATM machine anytime but you are certainly not forced to do so.

All you need is some commands in the ALIS that say, if a citizen reaches 21-years of age, his/her name will be automatically copied from the NRD database to the EC database, based on his/her latest address. (The EC will have to remove/suspend from the new entries those citizens disqualified as voters due to insanity or criminal conviction.)

Similarly, the ALIS can be programmed as such that: when names are deleted from the NRD database because people have migrated to other countries or heaven, these names are also deleted from the EC database.

Synchronisation can also be used to update a person’s address – birthdate and gender cannot be updated. The EC has used this to confuse the public and argue against automatic voter registration. It claimed that many voters will find themselves moved to new constituencies as they were not resident in constituencies they are registered in.

Now, again, this can be solved by specific commands in synchronisation. It can be easily programmed that update of address only happens if a voter moves within the constituency.

The impacts of automatic voter registration, voter deregistration and voter information update via synchronisation of NRD and EC databases are huge.

Don’t be taken for a ride

First, most errors in voter registration will have a single source: the NRD database. If we find clone voters, we shall also find clone citizens. If we find sudden upsurge of foreign-born voters, we shall also find mass-scale naturalisation of foreigners.

Secondly, some 3.7 million eligible citizens will immediately enter the pool of electorate. This July, the EC claimed to have registered 2 million more voters from 2009 but the eligible but unregistered citizens dropped only by 0.6 million in the same 18-month period, or 0.4 million a year.

Given this pace, if elections are called 12 months from now, some three million citizens will be denied their right to vote – even if they all apply to be registered instantly. Can the next elections be clean, free and fair if three million are disenfranchised?

We are all super-fussy about a smart phone that costs some RM1,000 – RM2000. Shouldn’t we be a bit fussy to insist that the EC must be as smart as our smart phone?

The government spends some RM200 billion yearly in our name, and you are taken for a ride if your voting right is denied or diluted.

Wong Chin Huat is a political scientist by training, a journalism lecturer by trade and a passionate Malaysian by birth. He will do everything to defend the Malaysia 2.0 born on the streets of Kuala Lumpur on July 9, 2010