PKR POLLS | With just three days to go before the PKR national delegates congress, the party's election committee (JPP) has announced that there will not be a re-election for the Sarawak division of Julau.

This becuase no data or votes were found to be compromised,  JPP chief Rashid Din said today.

However, he confirmed that six tablets from the voting centre had their electronic voting (e-voting) apps “wiped clean” by the Prey anti-theft app.

“Elections in Julau will not be held a second time.

“This decision was made after analysing the vote count, which showed all data is safe and has since been uploaded to the cloud system.

“This is even though the e-voting apps on six tablets were wiped clean by Prey.

“Voting details and technical analysis showed that no votes were missing and the voting results can, in fact, be used,” Rashid said in a statement.

Results for the division would be available online soon, he added.

The Julau PKR division results were suspended last Saturday after Rashid claimed that Prey had been used to delete the PKR e-voting app, steal data, change passwords and remotely control several tablets.

This came after PKR deputy president candidate Rafizi Ramli’s complaint that the tablets had been hacked by Prey, further labelling the app "malware”.

The company behind Prey has since released a statement stating that it is not malware, but in fact, an anti-theft software. It also clarified that its data deletion function did not allow administrators to selectively delete data.

Data mix-up in Tawau, Pensiangan

Rashid (photo, above) also said that re-election results for the Sabah divisions of Tawau and Pensiangan have also been accepted, but the JPP needed time to untangle several technical issues before announcing the numbers.

Among the issues were how voting data from the Nov 11 re-elections had been “mixed” with that from the initial elections on Nov 4 and 5. This was because e-voting apps on several tablets had not been updated to their latest versions.

“The e-voting data got mixed up but they can still be used and are not corrupted.

“The data in the main database and backup database needs to be isolated and re-arranged. The e-voting system is able to do this because all voting data has the place, date and time of the vote,” he explained, adding that this sorting-out process would take time.

As for the thousands of undi ragu (disputed votes) yet to be considered, Rashid said many of those who filled up the Borang 11 complaint form were found to be not party members and thus were not eligible to vote.

“Thus, JPP has decided to only verify a limited number of Borang 11 complaints - only for divisional leaders' votes which have tied results or thin majorities. JPP invites the relevant candidates to observe this process,” he said.

The party’s annual three-day national delegates congress will kick off this Friday at the Ideal Convention Centre in Shah Alam, Selangor.

Results of the entire PKR elections are expected to be announced then.