FULL SUPPORT TO EC ON AUTOMATIC VOTER REGISTRATION

I refer to the statement today by Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof, Chairman of the Election Commission that the Election Commission would consider an automatic voter registration system for all Malaysian who attain the age of 21 years old. The default voting constituency would be based on the last known birth address registered with the National Registration Department.

In line with my earlier statement, I fully agree that all Malaysians should be automatically registered as voter upon attaining the age of 21 years old.

There is no reason why Malaysians have to register themselves as voters. The existence of the current manual registration system would only serve to deprive certain Malaysians from voting in the General Elections. Currently, those unfortunate people stand at 28% of all Malaysians, from the statistics given as of end of last year.

Such a system is also a waste the government’s resources and the people’s money.

As correctly highlighted by Tan Sri Abdul Aziz, such a proposal would require amendments to existing laws, including the Federal Constitution.

It would be good if both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat would support the implementation of the automatic voter registration system and amendments to the existing laws, including the Federal Constitution.

Political parties no longer need to waste time and resources to gather their supporters to register as voters.

More important, Malaysians would no longer be deprived of their rights to vote on technical grounds.

Thus, I hope that the government would immediately set up a working committee under the supervision of the Election Commission to study the mechanism required for the implementation of the automatic voters’ registration system and the amendments required under existing laws and the Federal Constitution.

The automatic voters’ registration system would be best implemented by the next general election.