Election Commission (EC) chairperson Abdul Aziz Yusof today confirmed that about half of those attempting to register as voters in Selangor are not eligible.

According to Abdul Aziz, even political parties who often complaint that the electoral roll is dirty are attempting to register “the dead, underaged people and permanent residents”.

“In fact these political parties should screen the people they are trying to register first,” he said.

voter registration campaign 110707 registration Abdul Aziz had told this to Malaysiakini when asked about a letter issued by the Selangor Election Commission chief Dzulkifli Abdul Rahman on Aug 22 requiring copies of applicants’ MyKad be submitted along with voter registration forms.

In the letter, Dzulkifli said that “almost 50 percent” of registration submissions are rejected as the applicants are “dead, have addresses that do not match that in their identity cards, have registered before, and some are even permanent residents”.

To fix this, any application form which does not come with a copy of the applicant’s MyKad will be rejected outright.

Elaborating on this, Abdul Aziz said that the ruling only applies in Selangor as the problem is most severe in the state.

“Selangor has the most applications by those who are not eligible,” he said.

‘PAS should have double-checked with NRD’

On a separate matter, Abdul Aziz clarified that the charge of RM200 if objections against the electoral roll were unsuccesful is not a “penalty” but is a form of “compensation”.

“Once an objection is made, a hearing is conducted involving the objector and the person whose status is objected to.

“If the objection is unsuccessful, the person whose status was objected to will be compensated for having to attend the hearing,” he said.

NONE He added the amount is a “maximum of RM200" and is decided on a case by case basis.

He had said this when asked if PAS will have to fork out upwards of RM200,000 in penalties for the 1,000-odd objections they recently made to the roll.

The 1,000-odd people whose status was objected by PAS were listed as permanent residents on the National Registration Department’s publicly accessible database system.

Malaysiakini later reported Abdul Aziz as admitting that this was due to “technical negligence” as the NRD database had not been updated to show that these 1,000-odd people have been granted citizenship.

Asked if it would be fair to charge PAS upwards of RM200,000 for the NRD’s “technical negligence”, Abdul Aziz said: “This is to be decided in the hearing, but they should have by right contacted NRD to check first. Online systems can be outdated.”

He added that political parties should work with the EC to clean up the roll by submitting irregularities to the commission immediately, instead of blowing up the matter in the media.

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