Traceable or not, Selangor’s ‘phantom’ voters have right to vote, EC chief says

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 25 — Despite Selangor’s concerns that a sizeable 28 per cent of new voters in the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) state could be “phantoms”, the Election Commission (EC) maintains it cannot bar those registered as they have a legitimate right to cast their ballot at the next national polls.

“Under the law, they are registered voters in Selangor and they are legal voters in Selangor, whether you want to call them phantom voters (or not), they are registered.”

“They can vote in Selangor on polling day,” Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof (picture), the EC chairman, told The Malaysian Insider in a phone interview yesterday.

The commission chief was responding to Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim’s report last Friday highlighting a recent study that showed the state was unable to trace as many as 134,675 of the 497,084 of its newly-registered voters for the fourth quarter of last year.

For voters that Selangor claims cannot be traced, it “doesn’t mean they can’t vote”, Abdul Aziz said.

He also said that the EC determined a person’s voter constituency based on the address stated in his or her identity card (IC) and not according to the voter’s most current residence, which could be among the difficulties the state encountered in trying to track down a particular registered voter.

“The problem is they never stay [put] in that address,” he said, referring to the address recorded in voters’ ICs.

Abdul Aziz noted there were voters who worked on a contract basis and were forced to relocate frequently due to the nature of their job.

Such voters, he said, have a permanent address but only return to it occasionally.

He also pointed out that it was not unheard of for large groups of registered voters, including whole families, to list a common address of one relative or a friend, for the “convenience of the postman” because they lived in remote areas or shantytowns that are not recognised by the authorities and as such do not have a proper house number or even street names.

A whole village may share a single address, he stressed, adding that such cases made it very hard to track down voters.

“There is also a possibility that the people use somebody’s address because their addresses are not available, because they stay in squatters, have no address... sometimes they use the coffeeshop’s address, the bicycle shop’s address, the surau’s address,” Abdul Aziz said.

The commission chief said the EC would cross check with the National Registration Department (NRD), which is in charge of issuing the ICs — or as they are now officially called the MyKad — to verify a citizen’s identity and that their records are authentic.

“If the NRD answers that the IC is genuine, so we register that address,” he said.

He added that the EC gives a two-week window for objections to be recorded.

“If there are no objections, we gazette the name. If there are objections, we have a public inquiry,” he said.

Abdul Aziz said the EC repeatedly advises all registered voters to check and make sure their voter registration details — names, addresses and other particulars — are recorded correctly, and to inform the electoral body of any errors.

He stressed that under the law, the EC can only change a voting address if a voter makes the request.

“The SPR cannot change a person’s address arbitrarily,” he said, switching to the commission’s Malay initials by which it is more popularly known.

He said voters sometimes changed their addresses at the NRD but failed to inform the EC — which has led to criticism that the electoral rolls are not current.

One of the factors adding to the delay is that the NRD is not required by law to inform the EC of changes in a voter’s registration status.

The EC has been frequently criticised by election watchdog Bersih 2.0 and opposition politicians for failing to clean up its gazetted electoral roll of dubious entries.

“The SPR can only really clean the electoral roll with the help of voters and the people of Malaysia,” Abdul Aziz said.