EC on irregularities: It’s just ‘human error’

The Election Commission today urged all parties who have an issue with the voters list to approach them directly instead of highlighting the matter in the press.

PETALING JAYA: The Election Commission (EC) has attributed some of the irregularities in the voters’ roll to “human error”.

EC deputy chairman Wan Ahmad Wan Omar said that temporary staff who were recruited to assist the EC with voter registration could have made some mistakes when registering new voters. Hence, the irregularities found in the list.

“Our officers in charge will register based on what has been declared. They have thousands of forms to fill everyday. As we don’t do online registration, there may be human error,” he said.

He added that the EC has been making progress in cleaning up the roll and highlighted the cases of dead people who have been removed.

“We have 12.5 million voters; we are cleaning up the roll everyday.

“For now we have managed to rectify those who are dead, but there are some still on the list because their kin have yet to inform us that they are dead,” he said.

He was responding to some cases where the birthday and the new MyKad number of the person do not correspond.

Just today, FMT stumbled upon one such case where the person was born on Oct 23, 1955 but has the MyKad number registered as 600128125531.

Wan Ahmad, however, said that the blooper would not impede the voter from exercising his or her voting rights.

“When they come to vote, we don’t see if their birthdays don’t match with their MyKad numbers; we look at the MyKad number.

“As long as the MyKad number is attributed to the right person, then it will not hinder them from voting,” he said.

Two names, one MyKad number

Meanwhile, FMT received an e-mail pointing out that changes were made to the voters’ list within the space of three days.

Voters Mohideen Ahmed and Alinjinin Bin Louis@Hazwan B Abdullah who shared the same MyKad number (600128125531) are registered under the Keningau parliamentary constituency in Sabah.

On March 23, the MyKad number was stated as belonging to Mohideen in the EC website. Three days later, Alinjinin was stated as the voter registered under this MyKad number.

A quick check with the National Registration Department (NRD) revealed that the MyKad number belongs to Alinjinin.

Asked to comment on the mater, Wan Ahmad said that he could not comment as he needed to look into the details of the matter.

He, however, did not rule out a technical glitch in this instance.

A clearly irritated Wan Ahmad also did not rule out the possibility of the e-mail being fake.

He urged all parties who have an issue with the voters’ list to approach the EC directly instead of confusing the public by highlighting the matter in the press.

“These people make allegations without understanding the system but we can explain the irregularities as we have always followed our computing system,” he said.