Over 85pct of postal ballots returned in GE15

Over 85 percent of the postal ballots issued in the 15th general election (GE15) were returned to the Election Commission (EC).

While the EC has already made improvements to the process, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) Azalina Othman Said said there are plans to upgrade it further for upcoming polls.

“In the previous GE15, the total number of postal ballots issued within and outside the country was 365,686 and the total number of postal ballots received was 311,378. The percentage of returned postal votes was 85.15 percent.

“After GE15, the EC held a post-mortem with the appointed postal service operators to examine aspects of how to improve the delivery of priority postal ballots more effectively to voters, whether domestically or abroad, for upcoming elections,” Azalina said in a written parliamentary reply dated March 28.

She was responding to Rasah MP Cha Kee Chin who had asked about the matter.

Complaints on postal voting have often cropped up during election season, with many postal voters saying they received their ballots too late to send them back on time or not receiving their ballots at all.

Other voters have also said they faced technical issues on the EC website when applying for postal voting or receiving smeared ballot papers.

In GE15, some Malaysians residing overseas had to scramble at the last minute to find representatives to ferry their votes back home.

Postal votes have to be sent to the respective returning officers before polling closes on election day, which generally happens at 6pm.

Immediate vote counting

The counting of ballots takes place immediately after polling closes and the results are usually announced on the same day.

The Dewan Rakyat recently heard that the EC previously experimented with allowing overseas voters to cast their votes at their respective embassies during GE13 but the results were not encouraging.

Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) Ramkarpal Singh also said the government will not consider a proposal to delay official election results by 13 days to allow the arrival of postal votes.

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