New EC Tools To Update Voters
By Ali Imran Mohd Noordin
PUTRAJAYA (Bernama) -- With the coming 14th general election tomorrow (May 9), voters can expect to have a smoother voting experience as the Election Commission (EC) has made some improvements to the electoral process.
For GE14, EC has introduced a smartphone application called MySPR Semak to update voters on important information regarding the polls.
By just keying in their identity card number, the application allows them to check their status in the voter registry and details such as their voting district, voting centre, voting stream and the names of their Parliamentary and state constituencies.
Even information on the candidates contesting in their constituencies and GE13 results can be accessed via the new application.
MySPR Semak can be downloaded free of charge from Google Play and Apple App Store, said Election Academy director Hasanul Isyraf Naim, adding that it would be helpful to individuals, political parties and the media.
"This application has wide use. Individuals can use it to check their voter status while the media can look it up to get information on candidates.
"Political parties can use the app as a campaign tool to help voters in their constituencies to check their voter status," he told Bernama in an interview, recently.
As for constituencies that were involved in the electoral redelineation exercise, MySPR Semak will help voters to find out where their new voting centres are located, thus sparing them the inconvenience of going to the wrong centre on polling day.
"Once they have the correct information, voters can go directly to their stream (at their voting centre). They need not queue up under the hot sun to find out which is their voting stream," he added.
RESULTS LIVE ON FACEBOOK
EC has also opened special pages and accounts on social media platforms in conjunction with GE14. Its PRU14 (@Pilihanrayaumumke14) Facebook site has already garnered 35,000 "likes" at the time of writing this article.
For the past one month or so, EC has been sharing all kinds of information on its Facebook site regarding the history and process of this nation's general election journey.
The commission is also using the social media outlet as an avenue to respond to "hot issues" hovering over the community and setting right false information that has gone viral.
Among the issues the EC has responded to are the video clips of foreigners purported to be phantom voters boarding a bus and ballot papers supposedly being removed from police stations without permission; and text messages regarding ballot papers with black dots.
Using its Facebook space to educate voters on how the general election is conducted, EC also plans to post live broadcasts of the election results to keep the public updated as fast as possible.
The EC also has opened its own PRU14 channel on YouTube. Its Twitter handle is @pru14spr and Instagram handle, @spr_pru14.
DISABLED VOTERS
While it is the norm to cater to the needs of people with disabilities to enable them to cast their votes comfortably, many are still not aware of the facilities provided for them by EC.
If disabled voters encounter any difficulty in gaining access to their voting stream, they can refer the matter to the presiding officer on duty at the polling centre.
Usually, voters who have limited mobility or are wheelchair-bound would face a problem if their voting stream is located on the higher floors of a building that has no lifts.
However, the presiding officer has the power to decide whether the voter can be allowed to cast his vote on the ground floor. If the voter has to go to his original voting stream on a higher floor, then the EC staff would provide the necessary assistance to him.
Should the presiding officer allow the disabled voter to cast his vote on the ground floor, the head of the voter's original voting stream would release his ballot paper and strike off his name from the electoral roll. The voter's ballot paper will then be transferred to the voting stream on the ground floor to enable him to cast his vote.
Election agents representing the various political parties at the polling station concerned would be at hand to ensure that the procedures are carried out transparently without any element of fraud.
BERNAMA
