Bersih on Johor polls: Only 15pct happy with 'flawed' postal voting

 

Out of 46 respondents in Bersih’s online survey on the postal voting process of the Johor state election, only seven voters or 15 percent reported being satisfied with its process, according to Bersih’s latest report.

The other respondents, who resided in Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Qatar and the United States did not share the same sentiment.

The common complaint among respondents was the lack of time available for the ballots to be sent back, with some respondents claiming their ballots arrived only after polling day and others not receiving their ballots at all.

Approximately 30 percent of respondents also had issues with the registration process, facing technical issues or language barriers, as the forms and instructions are only available in Bahasa Malaysia.

Bersih noted that the Election Commission’s (EC) current method of processing and managing postal votes heavily relies on manual and human labour, which may lead to limited capacity and room for error.

They estimated that the EC could not handle more than 10,000 postal vote applications without running into backlogs and delays. However, it is noted that serious issues were faced during the Johor polls which saw only 7,814 postal votes.

Over 200,000 Johoreans living overseas qualified to be postal voters, yet only four percent applied. Bersih linked this to a lack of awareness.

“It reveals that many are still not aware that they can participate in the Johor election as a postal voter. If we look at the take-up rate for GE14 it is even more dismal.

“The primary responsibility to create public awareness and encourage eligible postal voters to participate in our country’s election lays with the EC and yet beyond the cursory issuance of press statements we did not see any active campaigns by the EC through mainstream or social media regarding postal voting,” read the report.

Lack of trust

Bersih also observed a lack of trust among postal voters in the integrity of the process.

“Some (respondents) suggested that if one were to be registered as a postal voter for the Johor election, they would be unable to vote as an ordinary voter in the 15th general election and that this is an insidious ploy by the EC to disqualify as many opposition supporters as possible.

“There are also some who are convinced that the technical glitches during the online application process or administrative errors are all deliberate attempts to disqualify, frustrate and spoil the votes of overseas voters whom they assume are mostly pro-opposition votes.

“Such mistrust of the EC is due to a lack of understanding of the process and it could have contributed to the low take-up rate of postal voting,” it said.

Among Bersih’s recommendations to increase overseas voter participation were by extending postal voter applications, increasing campaign periods to 25 days and providing bilingual options in forms.

To improve the EC’s capacity and efficiency they recommended abolishing the postal method, by using PDF versions of these documents instead.

“This would save at least five to 14 days to print ballots and documents, stuff envelopes and time for postal delivery.

“This would also save much cost required to employ people to do manual tasks, and material costs and eliminate administrative human errors like stuffing ballots into wrong envelopes or writing wrong serial numbers,” they said.

Bersih also suggested making proof of overseas residency mandatory to avoid abuse of postal voting, by requiring a photocopy of the last exit from Malaysia and entry into the foreign country or local utility bills. - Mkini