HAVE YOU REGISTERED AS A VOTER?
By the Administrator
ACCORDING TO ZAKIAH KOYA OF THE SUN, THERE ARE 4.39 MILLION ELIGIBLE MALAYSIANS WHO HAVE YET TO REGISTER AS VOTERS. WHAT ARE THE POLITICAL PARTIES DOING?
REGISTERING THE WINNING MAJORITY
Election Commission (EC) deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar recently revealed that some 28% or 4.39 million Malaysian over the age of 21 had yet to register as voters as at the end of last year.
Political parties are hot on the heels of those who have turned 21 but are not registered as voters. And the reasons is obvious – these young voters may just give them the edge come the next general election.
HOW POLITICAL PARTIES REGISTER VOTERS
As of December last year, Umno was reported to have about 661,000 members who had yet to register as voters, and the party is determined to tackle this problem.
Umno is targeting 85% of the 4.4 million eligible voters.
While BN parties work on getting their many members to become voters, the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition has set up a special joint committee to address the problem. PAS, Parti Keadilan Rakyat and DAP are to manage different areas.
“We are targeting 50% of non-registered voters. As for PAS, we have set up voter registration bureaus at the state level and have our units at the state assembly level,” says Datuk Abdul Halim Abdul Rahman who heads the party’s Voter Registration Unit.
Tong Pua of DAP says that although those registered as voters by a certain political party will not necessarily vote for the party during an election, past experience has shown they are more likely to do so.
Saifuddin Nasution, secretary-general of the PKR and MP for Machang, says the party had worked together with the EC to train its officials in the voter registration process.
“These assistant registrars are licensed by the Election Commission and we work together with the political appointees made up of village headmen, village councils and council members as these will be the people who benefit when we are elected the government of the day,” he says.
“Our timeframe is 12-18 months and we are concentrating mainly on the states that we have won as we want to win them again in the next general election,”.
WHY THEY DON’T REGISTER
There are three types of people who have yet to register as voters, according to Pakatan Rakyat.
“The first group are politically apathetic – they ask what is the point is they cannot change the government with their votes,” says Saifuddin. “The second group is the one with a logistics problem – to get to the voter registration centres is a hassle. Then there are those who just don’t know that they have to register as voters.”
SOLUTIONS
The EC would do well to take suggestions from political parties to prevent the number of unregistered but eligible voters from climbing – the most popular solution being the automated registration of voters.
Saifuddin says the problem would be eliminated if the government introduced the automatic voter status system.
In their Common Platform of the Pakatan Rakyat which will come into force if the Opposition comes into powers, Malaysians will automatically be registered as voters when they turn 18.
“As we are already using our MyKad to register as voters, why can’t the EC work together with the National Registration Department and make such a recommendation? This will solve the problem,” Saifuddin suggests.