Malacca heads to polls on Nov 14

The Election Commission has set Nov 14 as polling day for the 16th Malacca state election, with candidate nominations on Oct 31.

EC chairperson Ramlan Harun announced the key dates for the state election during a press conference at a hotel in Malacca today.

Early voting will take place on Nov 10.

According to him, the latest electoral roll updated as of Sept 22 shows 687,697 eligible voters. This comprises 675,166 ordinary voters, 9,769 military personnel and their spouses, and 2,762 police officers.

Ramlan said the Malacca election is estimated to require an allocation of RM28.45 million.

OCR-VA system

For this election, the EC has decided to expand the pilot implementation of the optical character recognition-voter attendance (OCR-VA) system to all streams across every polling centre involving all 28 constituencies.

"The OCR-VA system is designed to record and mark voter attendance automatically by scanning information on identity documents, thereby speeding up the verification and attendance recording process, reducing manual marking errors, and increasing the efficiency of personnel and processes on polling day.

"The EC stresses that the implementation of the OCR-VA pilot project is also part of efforts to digitise the election process without altering existing voting procedures," Ramlan (below, fifth left) explained.

"Voters only need to turn up at the polling centre as usual, present their identity documents to the election staff for verification, and proceed with the voting process according to existing procedures," he added.

Two weeks ago, Malacca Chief Minister Ab Rauf Yusoh announced the dissolution of the state legislative assembly effective Sept 23 to pave the way for the state election.

The state polls will see candidates vying for 28 state seats.

In the previous state election, BN successfully formed the state government after winning 21 of the 28 seats.

Political cooperation shake-ups

The upcoming state election is expected to see changes in political cooperation among BN, Perikatan Nasional and Pakatan Harapan.

This follows recent developments and outcomes during the previous Johor and Negeri Sembilan state elections.

Among others, a crisis within PN resulted in Bersatu being sidelined from the coalition, while PAS began cooperating with BN.

The Malacca polls may also see a BN-PN cooperation, while Harapan was previously reported to have begun discussions with Bersatu.

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