Selangor voter claims to have been registered unawares

A Kota Damansara resident has claimed to have been registered as a voter without her knowledge.

The resident, who asked only to be identified as Aida Nazlyn, said she has been studying abroad for the past four years and only intends to register once she returns to Malaysia upon the completion of her studies.

Hence, she said it came as a shock yesterday morning when her parents checked her voter registration status online and discovered that she had seemingly registered.

They then contacted her to ask when is she coming home to vote.

“For one second, when I received the news about my voter registration, I thought that our government had implemented the automatically registered system where those who do not vote will be penalised […]

“Honestly, I never ever registered myself. I doubt that I had a momentary memory loss or was sleepwalking or something,” she told Malaysiakini yesterday adding that she has no idea on how one even goes about registering as a voter.

A check on the EC website states that she is a voter for the Kota Damansara state seat in Selangor which is part of the Sungai Buloh parliamentary constituency.

She believes her name was entered into the roll some time after August 2014, which was when she changed the address on her IC to the area from her original address in Dungun, Terengganu.

The 32-year-old said she would not be able to return to vote as she is busy preparing for her thesis defence and expressed concern that someone else may vote using her identity.

Her concerns came amid other irregularities in the electoral roll that are being highlighted of late.

Constituencies changed

Yesterday, incumbent Klang MP Charles Santiago highlighted the plight of 10 similarly affected voters and lodged complaints with the Election Commission (EC).

He told reporters that Klang resident, Eugene Oliver, 25, had found himself on the electoral roll despite never having registered, according to a report by The Sun.

Several other voters accompanying him reportedly complained that their voting constituency had been changed from Klang to Taiping without their knowledge and despite their addresses remaining the same.

One of them, Sargunan Tamil Selvan, 27, was quoted saying that his address recorded in the National Registration Department’s database had been altered and now differs from what is shown on his MyKad.

Should the EC not perform remedial action by tomorrow, Santiago said that the affected voters will file a suit next week.

Malaysiakini has contacted EC chairperson Mohd Hashim Abdullah for comment on both Aida’s situation as well as those highlighted by Santiago and is awaiting a response. -Mkini