Don urges EC to implement e-voting for electoral reform

KUCHING (July 8): The Election Commission (EC) is urged to take proactive step in the country’s electoral reform by implementing electronic voting (e-voting) process to offer greater convenience to all voters.

In making such call, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia Faculty of Syariah and Law associate professor Dr Muzaffar Syah Mallow said it is high time for Malaysia to move away from the traditional voting process, which is time-consuming, exhausting and wasteful.

“The country needs to make use of the existing technology to conduct an election in a more effective manner,” he said in a statement today.

Muzaffar’s call comes in light of the recent Sungai Bakap by-election, during which many elderly voters were seen exercising their democratic right at the various polling stations.

The academician said a voter, who suffered from a stroke, was also seen arriving at a polling station in an ambulance, to cast her ballot paper.

“Similar situations were also noted during other by-elections which had been conducted previously. What’s more, the voters’ turnout in this recent by-election was not high,” he added.

He asserted that Malaysia can follow in the footsteps of Estonia, which had implemented e-voting process for its country election recently.

According to him, Estonians will soon be able to vote from their mobile devices after their country’s Parliament passed a law to set the standards for the e-voting process.

He said such Estonian e-voting law will come into force in October this year.

He observed that e-voting process was adopted in the Estonian parliamentary election way back in 2007, and last year, more than half of the total electors in Estonia cast their votes via the Internet.

“The recent legislative amendments will possibly make Estonia the first country in the world to allow voting through a smartphone, something that has long been expected to become a common practice in the future,” he said.

Muzaffar wondered how long it would take Malaysia to embrace advanced technology to implement e-voting process so that voters would not have to spend their time and energy on the existing face-to-face voting process.

He said high-tech applications can be designed and utilised to make people’s life easier given the age of technology today.

“The traditional way of voting process is very time-consuming, requiring energy and involving a lot of money, not to mention that the last general elections coincided with the monsoon season and some voters had to endure flood water when casting their votes.”

As such, he said the time has come for Malaysia to adopt the available technologies and implement e-voting process.

“If we are not ready for full implementation of e-voting process, we can at least try a hybrid-voting process. Hybrid-voting process combines the best of both online and offline voting,” he added.

Under hybrid-voting process, Muzaffar said voters can opt for casting their ballot papers either in person or via the Internet.

“EC should look into such proposal seriously. We need to examine the country’s existing election laws including the Federal Constitution before implementing e-voting process,” he said.