KUALA LUMPUR: The Election Commission (EC) has been urged to extend the campaign period to 21 days instead of the current 14 days. Additionally, Malaysian embassies abroad should collaborate with the EC to enable Malaysians abroad to participate in the democratic process, according to VoteMalaysia Coalition’s (VMC) Qyira Yusri. She suggested that Malaysians overseas be allowed to vote physically at embassies or mail their ballots to the embassies rather than their respective returning officers (RO).
Qyira Yusri further emphasized that Malaysian embassies cannot conduct such activities without the EC’s authorization. She urged the EC to explore this option in order to facilitate overseas voting. If direct involvement by the Foreign Ministry is not feasible, Qyira recommended that the ministry coordinate efforts with volunteers and non-governmental organizations to ease the process of postal voting. Speaking at a press conference held at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall on Saturday (July 8), she stressed the importance of providing sufficient time for overseas voters to mail back their ballots by extending the campaign period to 21 days.
Qyira also highlighted the various issues encountered by postal voters, with human error being the most common problem. Other challenges included ballots dispatched without a witness, ballots from different countries with similar names being swapped, and ballots lacking RO addresses, rendering them invalid. To address these concerns, Qyira suggested that the EC provide tracking numbers when dispatching ballots to voters and improve efforts to inform voters of the application deadline as postal voters. Furthermore, she proposed improvements to the EC website to facilitate the registration process and prevent crashes during periods of high registration volumes.
Credit: The Star : News Feed
