KUALA LUMPUR, April 15 — The DAP wants the Election Commission (EC) to explain the existence of “phantom voters” in several states in Malaysia, based on alleged inaccuracies in a report released by the commission.
DAP secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng (left), told reporters in Parliament that a report released by the EC on Feb 25, 2010 showed strong evidence to support DAP’s claims.
“In Terengganu, for example, the number of Indian voters under the National Registration Department are 1,441. But the number of Indian voters registered under the EC are 1,600.
“This means that there are 159 more Indian voters than recorded by the EC... these are phantom voters,” said Lim, who was flanked by fellow DAP colleagues Tony Pua, Anthony Loke and Charles Santiago.
He asserted that there was an urgent need for the introduction of an automatic voter registration process as a solution, in order to eliminate such incidents.
“Where did the extra voters come from? When records in the National Registration department do not even show that they exist.”
“There is a need for automatic registration, so we need to go through proses pendaftaran,” said Lim.
Other examples of discrepancies were also pointed out. One instance was in Sabah, where the number of Malay voters registered under the National Registry department was 115,349. The said amount failed to tally with the EC’s figure— 177,864.
“The figures show that the people registered as voters exceed the people who live there. Why is there no action taken? The EC is not independent, not fulfilling its duty,” added Lim.
The matter was raised in Parliament last week by Rasa MP, Anthony Loke, but no answer has yet been given.
“The issue of updating the numbers because of deaths does not arise because there is an update done every three months. This is not an excuse,” said Loke, in criticising the inconsistencies.
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