The National Institute for Electoral Integrity (NIEI) has called for the restoration of judicial powers to allow the courts to challenge the validity of the electoral roll.

kuala terengganu by election voting day 170109 wahid checking electoral roll “The recommendation, among others, is to abolish the ouster clause, Section 9A of the Election Act 1958, that prohibits judicial scrutiny on the electoral roll immediately...” said NIEI acting chairperson K Shan in a statement today.

The Election Commission (EC), in the parliamentary select committee (PSC) on electoral reform report tabled in Parliament today, had said it was powerless to address dubious voters in the master electoral roll.

This is despite some 200,000 dubious voters in the electoral roll which has been discovered by state technology agency Mimos Bhd.

The PSC has recommended for the drafting of new laws, empowering the EC to perform the corrections, to be tabled in the next Parliament sitting.

In 2001, the High Court in Sabah and Sarawak had declared the 1999 election for the state seat of Likas as null and void after it discovered thousands of dubious voters in the electoral roll.

Self-made legal hurdle

Shortly after, the sole platform for redress was demolished after former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad introduced an amendment to the constitution, making a gazetted electoral roll beyond judicial challenge.

Shan also called for an amendment to the Election Act 1958 for the electoral roll to be disseminated on the Internet to allow for better scrutiny.

bukit selambau by election 050409 ong boon keong Meanwhile, Malaysian Election Observers Network (MEO-Net) coordinator Ong Boon Keong ( left ) said the PSC had brought a legal problem upon itself by solely focussing on the EC.

“The PSC should have demanded that the National Registration Department (NRD) clean up its database and from there the EC should follow instead of saying that the EC has no powers,” he said when contacted.

The EC has consistently said its database was updated based on the NRD’s database through its advanced Agency Link-Up System.

He added that this would have been a better method, especially since the PSC report has recommended that the EC work towards implementing an automatic voter registration system within a year.

“At the end of the day, the NRD cannot have MyKads that cannot be verified because that information will be used when automatic voter registration is implemented,” he said.

The report has stated concerns of non-citizens possessing MyKad in Sabah as a matter that has to be resolved before automatic voter registration is implemented.

If Egypt can, why not Malaysia?

Ong, who has served as an election watchdog for seven years, also took EC to task for suggesting in the PSC report that it would be logistically difficult to implement overseas voting.

“If Egypt with a population of 80 million can do it why Malaysia with a population of 27 million cannot do it? We only have 12 million (total) voters,” he said.

According to a World Bank report in 2010, the Malaysian diaspora stands at one million, in contrast to Egypt which has an estimated 10 million citizens living abroad.

However, the EC said in the report that it may consider postal voting for overseas Malaysians on condition that they are registered voters and have returned to the country in the last five years.

According to the PSC report, the EC has similarly cited logistical challenge but had also raised a more serious problem of constitutionality for outstation voting, particularly for Sabah and Sarawak voters to vote for their home constituency from Peninsula Malaysia.

The report notes that the constitution only provides for a resident to vote at his or her own constituency but makes no mention of voting for his or her constituency from another location.

However, Ong again said this is a self-made problem, pointing out that extending postal voting to them would solve the matter.

“The EC has the discretion to allow any category of people to vote through postal voting,” he said.

This concept, he added, is essentially similar to outstation voting where a citizen can vote for the home constituency even though the person is not physically present there.