Lebih 200,000 belum daftar undi - SPR

Eligible Malaysians are advised to register as voters this month if they want to practise their rights in the 13th general election should it be held in September.

Election Commission (EC) deputy chairman Datuk Seri Wan Ahmad Wan Omar in making the call yesterday, revealed that some quarter-million Sabahans above the age of 21 have yet to register as voters.

“If they register in the second quarter of this year, they will be able to vote if elections are held after August,” he told reporters after briefing 30 officials from 15 political parties from Barisan Nasional and the opposition in Sabah about the electoral rules and regulations.

He disclosed that to date, there are 946,638 registered voters in Sabah and 258,943 eligible voters have yet to register.

Describing the figure of unregistered eligible citizens as “a big number”, he called on to them to come out and register now.

He said if the eligible voters do come out and get themselves registered, Sabah would have a total of 1,205,581 registered names in its electoral roll by September.

“Registered voters, meanwhile, may check their status and polling centres this month by sending their full name and MyKad number via text message to 15888 or contact the Sabah Election Commission number at 088-488588,” said Wan Ahmad.

On another development, he said very few people had come forward to clarify the position of some 13,000 dubious voters when they exhibited the names for three months.

“We believe many of these people are dead and their families did not report the deaths to the National Registration Department. We cannot remove their names so it will remain in the rolls until their next of kin come forward to clarify it.

“That is why sometimes there are cases of someone aged 120 still in the rolls.

"We cannot remove them as we are not empowered by law to delete such names.

"If the constitution is amended and the EC is allowed to delete these names without confirmation from the the National Registration Department, this can be dangerous,” he explained.

He added that most of these dubious voters were registered since the 1960s.
“That is also probably partly the reason why come election, the number of voters turnout is only about 75 per cent,” he said.

Also present at the briefing were EC deputy secretary Datuk Nordin Che Ngah and Sabah EC director Datuk Md Idrus Ismail.