Four Questions for EC on the issue of increase of Postal Votes in Ipoh Timur and Canning

Photos: The DAP Kinta Valley Reps were in Pasir Puteh Market (Ipoh) this morning for another day of “Yellow Saturday” Program. We have distributed 100 “Clean and Fair Elections” yellow balloons and hundreds of flyers explaining the 8 demands for a clean and fair election. Together with us are YB Ong Boon Piow (Tebing Tinggi), YB Lim Pek Har (Menglembu) and YB Sum Cheok Leng (Bercham).

Press Release by the State Assemblyman for Canning, YB Wong Kah Woh, on 27.08.2011 in Ipoh:-

The Draft Second Quarter Electoral Roll 2011 has shown an increase of 971 postal voters and 905 postal voters in the short period of Three (3) months in Ipoh Timur parliamentary seat and Canning state seat respectively. This has recalled our memory of how postal voters were being manipulated in the same constituencies in 2007, a year before the 2008 election.

The postal voters in Ipoh Timur has increased by 971 in the past Three (3) months, out of which 197 are newly registered voters and 774 are the transferred voters. The state seat of Canning which comes under the Ipoh Timur constituency, contributed to the most of these numbers, with an increase of 905 postal voters in total, comprising 148 newly registered voters and 757 transferred voters.

The drastic increase in postal voters in the past Three (3) months in the two constituencies is highly questionable, and the increase of postal voters in Canning had even been more than the increase in the number of increase of the ordinary new voters (434 voters).

There are Four questions to be answered by the Election Commission:-

(a) Why was there such a drastic increase in the postal voters in the two constituencies, which had even circumvented the increase of the ordinary voters in terms of ratio?

(b) Where are all the postal voters being transferred from in view of most of the new postal voters are actually transferred postal voters?

(c) How could the Election Commission manage to handle such a big number of the application for transfer of postal voters in a short period of Three (3) months in view of the bureaucratically process involved?

(d) How could the Election Commission ascertain the genuineness of the information and particular supplied by the authority to ensure the particular personnel is actually serving in the camps located in the constituency?

We had a similar experience in 2007. In a reply to the questions raised by the DAP reps in the Parliament, the Government has revealed that the postal voters in Ipoh Timur has increased from 1800 in the year of 2004 to 4000 in the year of 2007. The figure were reduced to approximately 2500 votes only after the objections raised by DAP.

We can never forget our experience in 2007. The sudden increase of the postal voters in Ipoh Timur and Canning in the verge of the forthcoming 13th General Election is clearly not a coincidence.

Democratic Action Party (DAP)