Postal ballot movement brings home over 35,000 overseas votes

GE15 | VoteMalaysia today said it has brought back a total of 35,092 ballot papers from overseas postal voters which were hand-carried by Malaysians on passenger flights from destinations across the globe.

The ballots were gathered from 25 countries before being sorted and delivered to 216 parliamentary constituencies nationwide.

Tharma Pillai, the advocacy director of Undi18, the NGO which founded VoteMalaysia, said that the initiative managed to increase the number of postal vote registrations by six times since GE14 which had 7,979 registrations.

This is in comparison to the 48,109 who have registered with the Election Commission (EC) for overseas postal voting in this election, of which VoteMalaysia brought back 73 percent.

“VoteMalaysia believes that every vote counts. We are committed to bringing home as many postal ballots as possible.

“We hope that the extraordinary effort of overseas voters to ensure they are able to cast their votes become an inspiration and motivation to all voters in Malaysia to vote in this GE15,” he added.

Tharma expressed thanks to the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall for offering a venue for its makeshift sorting centre, and to the nearly 200 volunteers who helped with the sorting.

He also thanked Global Bersih dan Global Malaysian Network for helping to convince Malaysian expatriates to register as overseas voters and help bring their ballot papers home.

“However, we also wish to emphasise that VoteMalaysia’s success is a sign of the EC’s failure.

“A more effective system should be implemented as soon as possible so overseas postal voters no longer need to continue depending on civil society groups or forced to fly themselves due to the problematic delivery and handling of postal votes,” he said.

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