EC copped to voter list blunders, Pakatan says

Nurul Izzah said elections must not be held until after the errors are rectified. — File pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 19 ― The Election Commission (EC) has confirmed that there are numerous errors in the electoral roll, Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leaders said today.

“All our grievances and fears were proved to be right. It was not based on wild assertions, it was based on proper findings, which were confirmed by SPR (EC),” PKR vice president Nurul Izzah Anwar told reporters after the EC’s meeting with over 40 MPs today.

“They cited they are only human. They are not perfect.

“Please address these concerns and please give us a pledge you cannot hold elections until you address all these wrongs,” she said.

PKR’s Fuziah Salleh and DAP’s Anthony Loke, who were also present at the press conference, enumerated the errors in the electoral roll that were acknowledged by the EC today.

Among others, Fuziah said there were 40,000 voters who were struck from the registry because of their dubious status, but were subsequently registered again.

She said that many of these dubious voters were aged over 90.

According to Fuziah, the EC had cited election regulations stating that they are not allowed to strike off names unless the National Registration Department (NRD) confirmed the voters status.

She also said there were 2,709 cases of voters who were reassigned to the wrong state localities even though their addresses remained the same.

“The SPR said they have stopped doing it, but our findings show that they continue to do it,” Fuziah claimed.

Fuziah also said 7,958 new voters were found to have “suddenly appeared” in the electoral roll without having been publicly displayed beforehand, saying this was based on a run of data from December 2011 to this year’s second quarter.

Loke said records show that there were close to 300,000 voters who had registered before they were aged 21, the voting age.

He said the EC had admitted and corrected the “data entry error” but kept the names on the electoral roll as the EC’s checks show that these voters had registered after reaching 21.

PR leaders and electoral reform group Bersih 2.0 have long demanded for a clean electoral roll ahead of the 12th general elections.

Bersih 2.0’s other seven demands are reforming postal voting, the use of indelible ink, a minimum campaign period of 21 days, free access to the media, strengthening public institutions, stopping corruption and ending dirty politics.