42,000 dubious voters struck off the list

The Election Commission cannot verify more 42,000 dubious voters and will be taken off the electoral roll.

GEORGE TOWN: A total of 42, 025 dubious voters would be removed from the electoral roll when the Election Commission verification process on the voters’ list ends at midnight today.

EC chairman Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof said the EC could not verify these voters after coordinating with the National Registration Department (NRD) to authenticate them for the past three months.

The EC has displayed names of total 42,051 dubious voters for public verification since Oct 27 last year. It extended the dateline for the verification process from last Dec 31 to Jan 31.

Of the names, only 26 were able to be verified while the rest remained unverified and dubious, thus would be deleted from roll.

“We have given enough time for all names to be verified.

“The unverified names will be deleted,” Abdul Aziz told newsmen after an EC state-level briefing session for election returning officers and agents here. Also present was state election director Morat Pora.

The verification was invoked by demands set by electoral reform coalition Bersih 2.0. The first of Bersih’s eight-point demand to EC was to clean up the electoral roll of dubious voters.

As of the end of last year, the country has 12,400,437 registered voters out of the 16,131,571 eligible citizens above age 21.

Abdul Aziz called on the remaining 3,731,134 or 23 per cent eligible citizens to exercise their rights by registering themselves immediately.

Of these three million citizens, he said Malays formed the biggest group, followed by Chinese, Indians and others.

“Registration process is simple and easy.

“You just have to take your identity card, go to the nearest post office and register yourself … even the form would be filled up by the staff,” he said.

Penang has 803,304 registered voters, with 157,618 or 18.5 per cent eligible citizens yet to be registered.

The EC’s record shows that an average 300,000 people are registering as new voters in each quarter.

Foreign voters

On overseas Malaysians’ right to balloting, Abdul Aziz said the country’s foreign office, Wisma Putra, has declined to undertake the task to conduct an open balloting process for them due to its complications.

Among the reasons given were that the ‘foreign’ Malaysians were staying all over the world and some were frequently shifting places.

Moreover, Abdul Aziz said the question on who should be eligible for voting must also be determined.

He raised question on whether those long-staying Malaysians of 15 to 20 years in foreign countries shall be allowed to vote when they had already lost touch with Malaysia.

He said the EC would accept those Malaysians, who are working overseas for past three to five years as they would still be attached to the country.

As for now, he said the EC has decided that early postal voting would be the right answer to the problem.