NO TO MANUAL VOTING
Despite technical glitches in e-voting, PKR will not revert to old system
PKR secretary-general Datuk Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said the party will not go back to the manual system despite several technical glitches in the party’s evoting system recently.
Saifuddin said in fact, polls in other states, such as Pahang, Terengganu and Johor, which used the e-voting system, went on smoothly.
“We will not go back to the manual system, not at all. Only some states, like Kedah and Penang, had problems.
“The problems in Selangor were not because of technical problems, but disciplinary problems,” he said here yesterday after announcing the price control scheme for Deepavali (see list on
Page 12) earlier.
He said there wasn’t any problem with the system, but the party would work towards strengthening it.
“Our Information Technology and Programming Department is working on enhancing and strengthening the system.”
Commenting further on the technical glitch during the Melaka and Negri Sembilan party polls, Saifuddin said it was due to the “click button”, which did not count the votes.
“The party’s Central Election Committee has found out that the glitch was due to the click button, which failed to send out votes, causing votes to not be counted.” It was reported that close to 2,000 votes vanished from the party’s e-balloting system.
The report said the missing votes accounted for 60 per cent of the total ballots cast last Saturday.
He said the party had decided not to call for a re-election, but would find ways to rectify the problem.
“The committee and our IT department are working closely to find a solution and a follow-up action. However, there are no talks of a re-election.”
On July, Julau PKR chairman Larry Sng said in a statement that he was taken aback over the sudden increase of members in the branch from only 603 on June 26 to 13,000 a day later.
Saifuddin said certain branches saw a spike of new members, adding that this was also happening at the national level, which had drastically seen an increase in membership since May 9.
“We had about 550,000 members since April 1999. However, the number increased to 843,271 between May 9 to June 26. This is an increase of about 300,000 in just a month and a half.”