The new online voter registration system, a year-round exercise to be introduced in July, will allow for a quarterly update of the electoral roll to ensure that newly-registered voters are not left out of an election.
This is in line with the latest amendments to the Elections Act 1958, which facilitated several changes including a quarterly public display of the voters list by the Election Commission (EC) during which time objections or claims can be recorded.
The EC will conduct a public inquiry, if necessary, to verify the objections but otherwise, the registered names will be confirmed the following month.
EC chairperson Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, in a meeting with representatives from all political parties today in his office in Putrajaya, expressed confidence that the new year-round registration will produce an almost clean electoral roll.
He said the voters list can never be 100 percent clean due to inherent problems within the administrative system, especially when it comes to cleaning up the names of those deceased who form the bulk of phantom voters.
The clean-up process for this category is the most difficult as we depend on the police for verification of the dead and it involves a long process, sometimes even up to five years, from the time the death is reported to the local police until we are officially notified.
Hopefully, with the new system ensuring a daily clean-up process, this can be overcome. Furthermore, the police recently gave us an undertaking to shorten the verification period for the deceased to six months, he said at the meeting to discuss how to conduct elections in a fair and transparent manner.
Half a million removed
The EC has also managed to remove about half a million names including those deceased, convicted and not eligible to vote, he added.
Other forms of verification, like a check for criminal records, take time, but I assure you that we are doing our best.
However, we cannot guarantee that the list is 100 percent clean of the deceased, which is a problem even in countries like the UK, Abdul Rashid said.
The new online year-round registration system will be available at 623 post offices nationwide, state election offices and the three mobile units which regularly tour the states, making it easier and more accessible for Malaysians to register as voters as soon as they reach the age of 21 years.
Previously, the voter registration was done once a year for a period of 30-42 days, and it took between eight months and a year for the electoral roll to be finalised.
When this long process cost more than 600,000 new voters their voting rights in the 1999 general election because the voters list was not ready, there was a huge public outcry with allegations of corruption and inefficiency levelled against the EC.
For the implementation of the year-round online voter registration, the EC today signed a contract with Sepakat Computer Consultant Sdn Bhd, which will prepare the system for launch on July 1.
The companys managing director Rosedy Issa said the systems direct link with the National Registration Departments database makes verification of identity card numbers quick and easy.
The window period has been shortened from between eight months and a year to three months before the electoral roll is finalised.
Asked about phantom voters, he said the problem can be overcome by the direct verification with the NRD database which is up-to-date, but clarified that the process at this level was only to determine the eligibility age and citizenship status.
