BERSIH 2.0 has uncovered new flaws in the electoral roll which sees voters in the same household registered in different localities, DUNs, or parliament seats.
We are extremely disappointed that these dubious voter statuses still remain in the electoral roll. The Election Commission (EC) has repeatedly claimed that it has corrected the electoral roll but in every quarter, new mistakes are discovered alongside existing errors by the BERSIH monitoring team. The EC’s incompetence casts a dark shadow over the validity and fairness in the present redelineation exercise.
Kuantan Member of Parliament, YB Fuziah Salleh, complained to BERSIH 2.0 and showed evidence highlighting electoral flaws in her constituency. For example, members in the same household on Jalan Beserah can be registered in Beserah and Teruntum, where both are completely separate DUNs.
When approached, the Election Commission (EC) told YB Fuziah that voter details are manually entered into the system without any smart links with GPS navigation to match voters to the correct boundaries. This, in itself, undermines the accuracy of the electoral roll.
With a flawed and outdated system, the EC is not even able to fulfil its basic duties to ensure that every citizen is able to vote and vote correctly. Such discrepancies can be done away with if automatic voter registration is adopted, a recommendation that BERSIH 2.0 has been pushing for since 2007 which has been all but ignored by the EC.
Furthermore, the long, drawn-out delineation exercise to ensure free and fair elections is made redundant when the EC is not even able to input voters in the correct boundaries.
The discrepancies in Kuantan are not an isolated incident. Following Fuziah’s revelation, BERSIH 2.0 resource person, Lee Wee Tak, investigated further and found similar cases in Johor, Sabah, and Perak.
While some inaccuracies can be put down to honest human error given the flawed system, BERSIH 2.0 will not rule out intentional tampering to tip the scales to favour a certain party in elections as the occurrence of such mistakes are happening repeatedly.
The EC would do well to start improving or overhauling their system rather than blaming their bad image on negative perception.
Signed by BERSIH 2.0 Steering Committee members