Not registered but a voter

J Brinda's case was among the many highlighted by election monitoring initiative Jom Pantau.

PETALING JAYA: J Brinda, 33, was shocked to discover that she was a registered voter in the Butterworth constituency, especially when she has never registered as a voter.

She later complained to the Election Commission (EC) who changed her details to her current address but completely overlooked the fact that she was not a registered voter.

This was among the irregularities in the electoral roll highlighted by Pusat Komas’ “Jom Pantau” – an initiative to monitor the elections.

Arul Prakash, the program coordinator, said that Brinda had highlighted her case to Komas.

“She appeared in the voter roll on May 9 this year. After she complained, they changed her address to the accurate details. But the point is she is not even a registered voter,” he told reporters today.

Brinda’s status was currently being verified but she could still object to her registration with the EC.

Arul also highlighted another case where ordinary voters’ status was changed to postal voters without their knowledge.

“The wife is a teacher. The couple had taken a trip to China in 2003 and stayed there for a few years. The couple believed that EC attained their information and changed their status.

“But they had not applied for a change in their status as voters,” he said.

Only civil servants, their spouses and students residing overseas qualified as postal voters.

Arul said that the couple too lodged a complaint with Jom Pantau after an inefficient explanation by the EC.

The EC told the couple that they had to make the corrections at the nearest EC office.

The trouble was, said Arul, the couple lived in Sibu and the nearest EC office was 400km away.

Jom Pantau had received 1,875 complaints since the project was launched last February. These reports come from individuals, organisations and political parties.

The election monitoring project mainly overseen by eight Komas staff members had looked into 194 reports thus far.

Same IC numbers

Highlighting more discrepancies today, Arul said 84 cases were people with the same old IC number but other details were different.

Both Miju Binti Ojing and Bok Chik Binti Maarif shared the same old IC number – 2008042 – but had different MyKad numbers and were voters in the Rasah and Rembau parliamentary constituencies respectively.

Jom Pantau also found 38 cases where voters with the same name and MyKad number were registered under different constituencies.

“These cases obviously raise doubts. If the system is flawed they have to freeze registration of new voters… there needs to be a certain standard to register the voters,” said Arul.

He said Komas wrote to the EC two weeks ago seeking a meeting to highlight these discrepancies and also to ask EC to recognise Komas as an official electoral monitoring system. The EC had yet to respond.

Meanwhile, Arul also urged members of the public to volunteer for the project, adding that so far 171 people had signed up.

Reports and more information could be attained from the project’s website, www.pru13.info.