Reform postal voting before GE15, urges Global Bersih

KUALA LUMPUR: Almost 50 per cent of overseas postal voters had problems with the registration process during the 14th General Election (GE14).

Among issues they faced included poor response and lack of information from foreign missions, last-minute rejections, applications not processed by the Election Commission (EC) and rejections without reason, according to a recent survey.

Global Bersih secretary Nirmala Devi Windgatter said these glaring failures by EC and other bodies showed EC needed to implement reforms quickly.

“For the first time, we have collected data of overseas postal voters and will submit recommendations to EC next week to ensure similar hiccups are not repeated in GE15,” she said.

Data collected from more than 50 countries, involving 1,620 overseas postal voters during the election period (April to May this year), revealed that EC did not process applications and notify citizens of their voting status and did not provide adequate and timely information on the registration and voting process.

“The illogical and impractical timeline for overseas voting has been well documented.

“This caused many voters to spend extraordinary time, effort and money to get their ballots counted in time for GE14,” Nirmala Devi said.

“Our recommendations before GE15 are that the voting age be lowered to 18, to implement an automatic voter registration, allocate a minimum of 28 to 30 days campaigning period, and standardise on an ongoing basis the system for overseas voter.”