EC to exorcise electoral roll of dead and phantom voters
The Election Commission's (EC) top priority, for now, is to clean up the electoral roll to rid it of dead and phantom voters, its chairperson Azhar Azizan Harun said today.
"There were 73,000 voters above 90 years old, with the oldest being 150 years old.
“Of this figure, we have learnt that 11,000 actually voted so they are still alive," Azhar told the media when met at a roundtable forum on electoral reform held at the Parliament complex...
The Election Commission's (EC) top priority, for now, is to clean up the electoral roll to rid it of dead and phantom voters, its chairperson Azhar Azizan Harun said today.
"There were 73,000 voters above 90 years old, with the oldest being 150 years old.
“Of this figure, we have learnt that 11,000 actually voted so they are still alive," Azhar told the media when met at a roundtable forum on electoral reform held at the Parliament complex.
The cleansing process will take the EC one month to complete, he said.
As part of the exercise, the commision is looking at deleting the balance of 62,000 voters above 90 years old who are no longer alive.
To prevent the names of dead people from being included in the electoral roll, he said, the EC was working on a system where it would instantly be informed of the names of dead voters.
"We are already in contact with the relevant authority and we will straightaway know about it once the police station informs the National Registration Department (NRD) upon receiving the death certificate," he revealed.
As for phantom voters who shared the same address, Azhar said the EC had gone down to the ground to check and in some cases, call in the relevant voters before deciding to delete them from the electoral roll.
"It is tedious. We have to make sure the chief registrar of the electoral roll is satisfied (that there are phantom voters) and the process of satisfying is not easy," he said.
Electoral regulations
Besides cleaning up the electoral roll, he said EC was also working to make electoral regulations clearer as they are ambiguous and open to interpretations.
Azhar, who is better known as Art Harun, denied that EC had appealed against the Seremban Election Court's ruling to nullify the election result of the Rantau state seat in the GE14 as it was against the holding of a by-election.
"EC cannot be against or for the by-election. We just follow the rules. If the by-election is necessary, then we will undertake it; we don't do it when it is not necessary," said Azhar.
"I made it very clear that we are not challenging the decision to avoid a by-election, but we are looking at several findings of the facts by the judge," he said.
EC will state its unhappiness over the ruling in a memorandum of appeal, which will be filed in the Federal Court, he added.
The Election Court in Negeri Sembilan decided on Nov 16 that the election for the Rantau seat should be held again, and declared the win by incumbent Umno deputy president and former Negeri Sembilan menteri besar Mohamad Hasan, null and void.
Mohamad retained the seat unopposed on May 9 after the election returning officers prevented PKR's Dr S Streram from entering the nomination centre to file his nomination papers.
In her judgment, Justice Azimah Omar had also reprimanded the EC’s returning officer Amino Agus Suyub for not having followed the rulebook when preventing the PKR candidate from entering, as he knew Streram was outside the nomination centre.
The judge also admonished Amino Agus as a liar and the court found him to be in contempt of court for trying to coach a witness and had sentenced him to three months' jail. This matter is on appeal.
Justice Azimah also ordered Amino Agus to pay RM30,000 in costs.
Mohamad said he would file an appeal.
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