Election watchdog Bersih has strongly objected to the shifting of army personnel and their families to an uncompleted Segamat camp in Johor.

"We express our vehement protest as this a serious electoral offence and constitutes as cheating," said the election watchdog in a statement today.

On Oct 31, Johor DAP revealed that 1,051 army voters have been transferred to the Segamat camp while 218 army voters are still registered at the Majidee camp in Johor Bahru, which closed down in 2014.

"The Federal Constitution stipulates that a citizen can register at the Parliament and state constituency where he or she resides," said Bersih. 

"Thus, a serious question has arisen when 1,079 voters was moved to (an uncompleted) Segamat Camp under Segamat, a parliamentary seat won by Health Minister Dr S Subramaniam with only a majority of 1,217 votes," it said.

Bersih said the existence of the two new localities at Segamat Camp showed that Election Commission (EC) had not conducted a study on the ground on their validity of the locations and failed to make sure voters existed at that particular area.

It continued to say that "the EC had also failed to check the 1,079 voters as required under Regulation 13 of the Elections (Registration of Electors) Regulations 2002, which led to the creation of phantom voters in the electoral roll."

"Moving the voters to marginal seats in an illegal and planned manner is not something new. Bersih and other political parties had in many occasions exposed the matter," said the group.

"EC not only failed to rectify the problem but they stopped issuing additional electoral rolls to political parties in electronic form, which made it harder to detect phantom voters," it continued.

Bersih called for such manipulation registration and shifting of voters to be stopped. 

The group further demanded an explanation from the EC and Defence Ministry about the problem and questioned if similar incidents also occurred in other camps. 

"EC should cancel the shifting and new registration before the gazette of the new electoral roll. The police and the attorney-general should also probe the issue as this had violated Section 3(1)(a) of the Election Offences Act 1954," said Bersih.