Overseas voters advised not to keep ballot papers for long - EC





PUTRAJAYA, April 28 (Bernama) -- The Election Commission (EC) has advised absent voters overseas to not keep their postal ballot papers too long to avoid them reaching the returning officer late on polling day on May 9.

Addressing the worries of Bersih 2.0 over the limited time for overseas absent voters to receive and send their postal ballot papers, EC chairman Tan Sri Mohd Hashim Abdullah said the ballot papers would be sent on the third day after nomination day and they had ample time to return these papers.

"If they receive and keep them for too long, we are sometimes like that, then only send them back at the last moment, then we will definitely have a problem.

"Because of that, I always urge overseas voters to immediately make their choices and send the ballot papers back to the returning officer. The papers will be kept in a safe place until it is time to count the votes," he said at a press conference held on the nomination process for GE14 candidates here today.

Bersih 2.0 had urged the EC to clarify the short period of time given to overseas absent voters to return the ballot papers to the returning officers before 5 pm on May 9 as there was a public holiday on May 1.

For GE14, going by applications received by the EC from Jan 23 until Parliament was dissolved on April 7, there are 3,653 absent voters overseas.

In a previous statement, Mohd Hashim had said the EC had an assurance from Pos Malaysia for safety and confidentiality with all deliveries classified according to registered postal procedure with the use of the Pos Laju network.

For the record, the EC had used the services of Pos Malaysia for the delivery process of postal votes for all by-elections conducted since GE13 as well as for the 11th Sarawak State Election two years ago.

The GE14 involves 222 parliamentary seats and 505 state seats. In Sarawak, only parliamentary election will be held as the state election were held in 2016.

The EC had fixed today as nomination day, May 5 for early voting and May 9 as polling day.

-- BERNAMA