DAP veteran lawmaker Lim Kit Siang has urged the Election Commission (EC) to extend the online registration for postal voters for the upcoming Johor state polls if news that only some 1,000 voters have registered as postal voters were indeed true.
This is despite the fact that there are 200,000 Johor voters residing in Singapore, said the Iskandar Puteri MP.
“I call on the EC to extend the online registration for a week or it will be the single biggest IT failure in the world,” he said.
“It has been reported that only some 1,000 voters have registered as postal voters in Singapore when there are 200,000 Johor voters there.”
Lim urged the EC to extend the deadline of the postal voter registration from today (Feb 18) to next Friday (Feb 25) which he claimed “should not pose a problem in the internet era especially as Johor voters in Singapore have been given less than 10 days for registration exercise.”
According to Lim, the postal voter registration exercise by the EC has been plagued by many glitches and technical issues.
Former State Assemblyman for Pekan Nenas Yeo Tung Siong, for instance, has received complaints about these technical issues from more than 10 Johor voters working in Singapore in the last two days.
Former State Assemblyman for Mengkibol Chew Chong Sin, meanwhile, suggested that the EC enhanced the overseas postal voting system for the Johor polls as there is a huge Malaysian diaspora particularly in Singapore.
Chew suggested that the EC should allow Malaysians to vote at the Malaysian embassies with the overseas embassies become polling stations where registered voters can collect their ballots and to vote on the spot.
Said Lim, the EC should act on these proposals to ensure that maximum voter turnout can be achieved during the Johor state polls on March 12. – Feb 18, 2022
