PKR leadership elections to feature online voting

 

PKR's leadership election will be conducted both online and in-person in April, in what is likely to be a first for a Malaysian political party.

According to PKR's election committee chairperson Zaliha Mustafa (above), this hybrid voting system will encourage more party members to vote.

"This is because the hybrid voting system will combine online and in-person voting which will make it easier for them to vote from anywhere without having to return to the division where they are registered with," she said in a statement today.

Since 2010, PKR has practised a one-member-one-vote system to elect the party's central leadership council. It is the only party in the country to do so. In practice, voter turnout is generally low at around the 20 percent mark.

According to Zaliha, PKR has 1,004,629 members as of August 2020. Only members who were registered before Jan 31 will qualify to vote. The final list of eligible voters will be ready on Feb 18.

She said party members will soon be able to download a smartphone application known as "Adil App" to update their records and register for online voting.

The last party election was held in 2018, which saw voters using tablet computers to vote. As the number of tablet computers was limited, the voting process took eight weeks to complete.

Prior to this, the party relied on the traditional pencil on ballot paper method for internal elections. - Mkini