Rafizi raises weaknesses in PKR polls, lodges formal complaint

 

Rafizi Ramli, who is vying for the PKR deputy president position, has raised various weaknesses in the electoral system including the ability of people to vote multiple times on behalf of others.

"Voters are not given a slip (either a QR code or something similar) which can limit people to vote only once.

"The central election committee (JPP) officials only check the details of members and allow them to vote without observation.

"This weakness in the system raises the risk of fraud as a voter can bring in a list of members with their identification card and vote repeatedly on behalf of others," he said.

Rafizi (above) added that a video from the Tanah Merah PKR division showed that the ADIL election system allowed people to key in identification card numbers and vote multiple times.

This was one of several weaknesses he outlined in an official complaint to the JPP which was also copied to PKR president Anwar Ibrahim.

In the letter, Rafizi, who is PKR vice-president, said he had refrained from directly being involved in the party's decision-making process as it would be unfair to other candidates without positions.

As such, he said a formal complaint to the JPP was the appropriate course of action.

"While I understand that the weaknesses are due to the decision of the party leadership insisting to proceed with the election without giving enough time to the JPP to prepare, it is the responsibility of the JPP to resolve these problems.

"As a tech entrepreneur with a number of products and technological applications in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, I understand the time given to the JPP (two to three months) is not enough to develop and fully test the ADIL voting system.

"The application used for physical voting as well as online through the ADIL system should have been tested on a much larger scale compared to how it is deployed now without holistic testing," he said.

Rafizi also pointed out flaws in the PKR electoral roll, claiming that there were duplicate entries which caused inaccurate retrieval of data.

The PKR election is ongoing, with Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah, Johor the Federal Territories and Pahang having already voted.

The election uses a hybrid system with a combination of online and physical voting.

Lost votes

Among the methods include voting through a mobile application, voting through the web, voting physically on a tablet connected to the internet as well as voting on a tablet which data is temporarily stored on the device before it is later uploaded to the internet.

Rafizi said the multiple methods of voting mean they need to be manually tallied later on, which opens the risk of manipulation.

He also took issue with data being stored locally on the tablet, which he said could be lost when attempting to upload to the internet.

"In the previous party election, more than 20,000 votes were lost when the data was being uploaded to the internet.

"I became a victim as a large number of divisions which voted for me (including Pandan, Selayang, Pensisangan and others) experienced this problem," he added.

Rafizi, who also contested for the deputy president position in 2018, lost to Azmin Ali by around 3,000 votes.

Furthermore, he said as the JPP did not track the people who turn up to vote, it is unable to tally with the number of votes actually inputted into the system. - Mkini

"I also received many reports that election officials were recruited from the same state and were chosen by certain people only due to the task being delegated to the state chairperson.

"In Kelantan, for example, many election officials are from the same place and are linked to a candidate who is also contesting at the division level.

"This is in contrast to past elections where election officers came from different states and divisions to avoid complaints of bias, as is seen now," he said.

Rafizi urged the JPP to bring the matter to Anwar.

He also asked the JPP to postpone voting in the remaining states pending improvements to the system to avoid results being voided.