Maria Chin cries foul over 'serious errors' in postal voter roll

GE14 | Maria Chin Abdullah is calling into question the integrity of the electoral roll after allegedly discovering "major discrepancies" for Taman Medan, which she claimed has affected one in six postal voters registered there.

"My team has uncovered that a shocking number of postal voters are listed in a different polling district compared to what is listed in the electoral roll.

"By checking the postal voter electoral roll against the gazetted electoral roll, we found that a total of 17.1 percent of postal voters in Taman Medan are listed under the wrong voting districts," Maria said in a statement today.

This was a problem, she stressed, as such discrepancies would allow a voter to first vote as a postal voter, and yet remain in the gazetted electoral roll so they may vote again on polling day on May 9 in the other polling district.

Maria pointed out that other inconsistencies discovered included IC numbers and names, which differed from the gazetted electoral roll.

Taman Medan is a state seat under the Petaling Jaya parliamentary constituency which Chin is contesting in.

Maria, who formerly served as chairperson for Bersih, resigned from her post with the electoral watchdog in order to contest in the coming general election as an independent under the Pakatan Harapan banner.

The Petaling Jaya parliamentary seat was formerly known as PJ Selatan, but was changed following the Election Commission's recent redelineation exercise.

"These errors are concentrated in one section of the list... the petugas section. Are we supposed to believe that the Election Commission is so incompetent and the major irregularities found here are a result of nothing more than a technical defect in their system?

"The scale of such discrepancies raises a question mark over the integrity of the gazetted electoral roll, and possibly the legitimacy of the election itself," her statement read.

Maria called on the EC to be more transparent in the way in which they conduct postal voting, as such discrepancies could have a huge impact in marginal seats.

She said it was the commission's role to ensure the gazetted electoral roll was free from irregularities, adding that the electoral body would not wish to be seen to be tilting the polls in favour of BN. - Mkini