KUALA LUMPUR: There will be about 7.8 million new voters in the electoral roll by the year 2023, should the voting age lowered to 18, the Dewan Rakyat was told today.
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who tabled the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2019 for the second reading, said by 2023, there would be a 50 per cent increase in the number of registered voters as compared to some 14 million voters in the 14th General Election last year.
"After 60 years (of Independence), Malaysia, as a democratic country, has never reviewed the age eligibility for voting. This is while the United Kingdom, west Europe, United States, German Canada and Australia had lowered the voting age. India, Pakistan, New Zealand, and Asia have done so in the 1980s, with the last being Japan in 2016.
"Currently, only Malaysia and Singapore in Asean have yet to lower the voting age, as well as several countries in Africa (which) still maintained the age.
"Other Commonwealth countries like India, which follows the Westminster system with an overall 900 million voters, have set 18 as the voting age," said Dr Mahathir.
He said following this, the government was compelled to review the voting age to give opportunity and voice to the youth so that they could be involved in the country's democratic system.
"Our youth today are more exposed through the mass media, information technology (IT), independent and more informed," he said.
He said Malaysian youth should be able to balance their time between carrying out their responsibilities to the country and studies.
"This is in line with government's aspiration to produce responsible citizens," said Dr Mahathir.
The Constitution (Amendment) 2019 Bill seeks to lower the voting and election candidacy age to 18 (current age eligibility is 21) as well as to enable the automatic registration of voters.
The amendments under Article 47 will see the words “21 years” substituted with the words “18 years” for a citizen to be an elected representative.
Amendments to Article 119 involves Clause (1), with regards to the voting age.
"This would allow more Malaysian citizens to vote," read the Bill.
In Clause (4) of Article 119, the words “applies for registration” will be substituted with the words “is registered” to denote automatic registration of voters of those who turn 18 by the Election Commission.
The government had previously rescinded an earlier version of the bill on Wednesday last week to allow changes made on it, following requests from the opposition to also amend the minimum age for election candidacy to 18 and for automatic registration.
Any amendment to the constitution requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Dewan Rakyat.
As Pakatan Harapan does not have the numbers to carry the vote through, it was necessary that the government received the support of the opposition.
A total of 58 members of Parliament are scheduled to debate on the bill.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article erroneously reported that there would be 7.8 million new voters every year until 2023. The error has since been rectified.