Postal Vote

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

There have been a lot of articles and posts regarding postal vote. This is not to summarise them but just to let you know the experience of one of friends who tried to exercise her right to vote outside Malaysia.

The nomination day is on 24th February 2008. The postal votes must reach the polling station by 5.00pm of 8th March 2008. This leaves the voters 13 days to post your votes or less because you need to wait until the nominations are confirmed and then SPR will print the postal ballots to be sent to the High Commission or wherever that they can reach the eligible postal voters, and then you got your postal ballots, cast your votes and then post it back home to Malaysia and not just to KL but to the polling station where your votes belong to. All these in 13 days or less! Say the nominations (with or without stamps!) got confirmed on 24th February 2008, late evening and send to printing. 25th February 2008 (we are talking about high efficiency here, hello Malaysians!) the postal ballots are printed and posted. Let's say an express postage to countries out of Malaysia will take 2 days, ordinary postage takes 1-2 weeks. So, you can start vote out of Malaysia on 28th February 2008. Say you really are a good citizen, you voted on 28th February 2008 and ask the person in-charged to post it, or you want to post it yourself. Let's make another express post since you want to post it yourself, don't mind spending more money for that. So, it will definitely reach the polling station before 8th March 2008.

Come back to the reality. Are we that efficient? My friend who is eligible to cast a postal vote went to vote about a week before the polling day. She was refused her right not because they think that she will vote for 'dodgy' candidates but their reason is because the vote will only reach the polling station 3 weeks later! They said there is no use of making a postal vote from UK. So, they really are not using express postage service. That means that the postal ballots are also not going to reach the embassy outside Malaysia in time to be filled in. Hmm... So, how come there are thousands of postal votes? Did the postal votes arrive by 5pm on 8th March 2008? or after midnight?

In addition, before you are eligible to make a postal vote, you need to fill in Form A at the High Commission on your arrival in any country out of Malaysia where you know that you will not be in Malaysia on the polling day (proven by your visa). How many of the eligible voters of Malaysians really fill in this form? Or do they know that such a form exists?

Can someone from SPR publish the statistics of postal votes?

I doubt they will.

ALLAHU'alam.

Wassalam.