In support of the letter written by Jeff Ng on voter registration, I wish to ask why the Election Commission has to take three months to register a voter. According to the EC, there is a three-step process to register a voter but this is a flimsy excuse.

The EC has said it needs to verify the identity of new voters against the national registry (to check their identity card again) and against police records (to check against death certificates). But isn't the verification work involving the first agency redundant? Doesn't the EC trust the sophisticated MyKad which every new voter must produce for registration?

As for police and other agencies, I trust that our advanced technological know-how from the Multimedia Super Corridor project should not let us down by seeing to it that all the information is networked between the agencies. Why such work has to be done manually is beyond belief!

Instead, it invites suspicion that perhaps there are other unspeakable checks underway, eg assign voters according to the advantage of some political parties!

In any case, where can voters object to the registration process, if theirs, or the names of their relatives, were wrongfully registered or is missing from the electoral list? With other citizens who want free and fair elections, I'm afraid to say that I cannot find this information in the EC website. Why allocate so much time for identity verification when it has not been proven as effective to eliminate defective registrations?

I think that automatic registration of voters is not beyond the capacity of the Malaysian EC. However, when this idea was proposed by the EC for the Sabah election, it actually caused a stir - not of the positive variety however. The EC was scolded by its BN boss for apparently messing up the electoral roll!

A clean electoral roll is the bedrock of free and fair elections. I strongly urge the EC and the BN political bosses involved to stop dragging their feet in automating voter registration.