NEWS that the Election Commission (EC) is allowing Malaysian voters residing in neighbouring countries to vote via postal ballots in the Johor election is welcome indeed.
The EC is also doing away with the requirement that all overseas voters must have spent at least 30 days in the last five years in Malaysia. Until now, Malaysian voters in southern Thailand, Singapore, Brunei and Kalimantan in Indonesia were not eligible to avail themselves of this voting option, and had to make the trip home every time they wanted to cast their ballots.
The short time-frame between the dissolution of a state assembly or Parliament and the determination of the election date, coupled with juggling leave application, travel arrangements and expense, as well as child- or family-care, has meant that voting for the Malaysian diaspora who were ineligible for the postal ballot has always required an additional commitment and sacrifice — one that is completely unnecessary.
But in typical Malaysian form, the announcement of this option came at the last minute. The EC decided on the matter only on Wednesday, and voters in these four areas will have until Feb 18 to register as postal voters.
During the Melaka election last year, overseas voters were given only 13 days to register, and that was already considered too short.
Johor overseas voters will have less than 10 days. And unfortunately, because people have to already be registered voters before they can apply to be postal voters, this last-minute amendment means that those who had not registered as normal voters because there was little opportunity for them to vote without having to go home, especially for elections, will not be eligible to vote in this state election since the electoral roll that will be used is that of the last quarter of 2021.
No doubt they are partly to blame; but, if these amendments had been made much earlier, many of them would have had time to get themselves onto the gazetted electoral roll.
The world has been living with Covid-19 for more than two years, and countries all over the globe have had to adapt their election processes to the disruption the pandemic brought.
Even though postal voting is the most logical method for absent voters to cast their votes whether or not there is a pandemic, it has unfortunately been held as a privilege rather than a right.
With Malaysian states breaking away from the previous mould of running their state elections in parellel with the general elections, state electors will have to vote twice.
The postal ballot will therefore become even more necessary this year, as we try to live with this pandemic and face the possibility of a snap election.
The EC should thus have had all this in place well before this. Is nine days enough for registering voters without a hitch? Will there be enough time for postal voters to receive, mark and then return their ballots papers in time for them to be counted? If the EC truly wishes to see a high voter turnout, it should extend the postal vote to Malaysians living outside their home state — or at least to those separated by the South China Sea.
This won't be the last pandemic we have to live with. The EC needs to be nimble in making the voting process pandemic-proof.