Information technology experts have confirmed the 2,000 "missing" votes in the 2018 PKR elections recently in several divisions in Malacca and Negeri Sembilan was due to inability to store the data via the cloud (storage) as the internet access was weak.

This was stated by the Central Election Committee (JPP) chairperson Rashid Din, who also rapped the claims of some quarters who appeared to be accusing the committee of hiding and manipulating vote-data.

He said the confirmation was made unanimously by five information technology experts comprising representative of the PKR's top leadership as well as experts from the Institute of Darul Ehsan and from abroad, as independent experts, during a session to present the division’s e-voting election process today.

"This weak internet access has been acknowledged by the experts and it caused unreadable voting data, which cannot be sent to 'cloud storage'. That's why the online votes were 'lost'. We will table the findings in a meeting to see what action we can take.

"To be fair (to voters), the first idea we can make is a reelection before the PKR Congress on Nov 16. Whether in full or in part, we will decide after the meeting soon, "he told reporters in Shah Alam today.

To avoid a repeat of the same issue, Rashid said JPP would create a direct duplicate storage of ballot data, namely, stored via the cloud and in the computer tablet itself, as well as making the voting process online and offline as improvements.

He said it would facilitate the technical team of the JPP to monitor the voting process graph, and in the event of any unexpected incident, they could easily detect, for further action.

Rashid said although there were some technical problems in the polling process for this election, JPP was confident that the e-voting system was the best and safe.

"As a result, there have been some attempts to hack the e-voting system during the election in Malacca, but from any aspect, the system is believed to be safe as we also use our own hackers to prevent other hacker activities.

"For this issue, we will discuss and view all aspects including internet access, hackers and staff who try to sabotage the votes. We will continue to improve the system in the future, "he said.

The media earlier reported that there were 'missing' votes in six divisions in Malacca involving 1,700 voters and one division in Negeri Sembilan (300 voters) resulting in the decision of the PKR polls in both states to be deferred.

-- Bernama