Volunteers in Singapore help to send home 9,000 postal votes

SINGAPORE: Malaysian volunteers from 1thirdmedia Movement successfully brought back about 9,000 postal votes for GE15 from Singapore on the eve of polling.

They joined hands to collect the postal votes around the city-state from Malaysian voters who were working and residing there, in a seven-day collection campaign.

1thirdmedia Movement is one of the groups teaming up with Undi18, a Malaysian youth movement, to bring back postal votes from

Singapore. They had done the same during the Johor state elections earlier this year.

“We feel relieved to complete this duty entrusted to us before voting

day. We hope these votes will reach voting centres on time,” volunteer Farrah Diyana Mohamad Ali, 34, told Bernama yesterday.

She said five collection zones had been set up to cover the central, eastern, western, northern and southern sectors of the island nation before they were combined to be taken back to Malaysia.

The boxes safely arrived around 2am at the sorting centre in Kuala Lumpur after the cut-off time for collection at 2pm on Nov 17 in Singapore.

“Happy ... overwhelmed ... to be able to bring home these ballot envelopes,” said another volunteer, Calvin Ong.

“It’s a success for our team after a week of hard work collecting the postal votes.

“It’s very tiring but a worthwhile mission for the sake of the country,” said Ong, 35, who hails from Taiping.

After all the hardship, Ong left a simple but strong message to the 21 million Malaysian voters: “Go out and vote.”

According to Undi18’s Twitter, there are a million Malaysian voters overseas. It has been sharing a few photos while receiving ballots from around the world at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, with China and Germany being the earliest.

Apart from the 1thirdmedia Movement, the others involved in the collection mission are Vote Malaysia and Global Malaysian Network.

All the ballot envelopes will be taken to the sorting centre in Kuala Lumpur for the sorting process for the parliamentary and state constituencies and sent to the states, including Sabah and Sarawak.

The deadline for postal ballot papers to be received by the managing officer at the Election Division is before 5pm on voting day.