LETTERS: Congratulations to all voters for casting their valuable vote during the recent Kuala Kubu Baharu by-election. Voters' participation in the election process strengthens the country's democracy.
In the same spirit, I would like to emphasise that the time has come for us to make use of all the available technology to ease the voting process.
We cannot continue to rely on the old way of voting which is time-consuming, exhausting and wasteful. The country needs to make use of existing technology so that the voting process will be more effective and comfortable.
In this case, why not learn and follow the move made by Estonia, which has recently implemented online voting or electronic voting (e-voting) for their country's election.
According to the new law, Estonian citizens will soon be able to vote from their mobile devices, such as cellphones and tablets, after the country's Parliament (Riigikogu) passed a law to standardise this process.
The law will enter into force in October. Electronic voting in Estonia gained popularity in 2001, with the "e-minded" coalition government. In 2005, it became the first nation to hold legally binding general elections over the Internet with its pilot project for municipal elections.
Estonian election officials declared the electronic voting system a success. Internet voting was also used in the 2007 Estonian parliamentary elections, another world first.
In the 2023 parliamentary elections, for the first time, more than half of the total votes were cast over the Internet. It looks like the recent legislative amendments will possibly make Estonia the first country in the world to allow voting through smartphones, something that has long been expected to become a common trend in the future, with the advent of technology in practically every aspect of daily life.
The legislative changes will create preconditions for the use of Smart-ID for personal identification, which will allow the use of mobile devices.
How about Malaysia? How much longer do we want to burden voters with spending their valuable time and energy on the current voting process?
We are living in the age of technology where many high-tech applications can be designed and utilised to make people's lives easier and more convenient. We should make use of existing high-tech applications to allow voters to vote online instead of the current process at the polling station.
DR MUZAFFAR SYAH MALLOW
Associate Professor,
Faculty of Syariah and Laws,
Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times