No plans to extend postal voting to Sabah and Sarawak voters in peninsula, says Mas Ermieyati

KUALA LUMPUR: There are no plans by the Election Commission (EC) to extend postal voting to Sabahans and Sarawakians unable to return home to vote, says Datuk Mas Ermieyati Samsudin.

"There is currently no need to extend postal voting to them," the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Parliament and Law) said in reply to Datuk Rozman Isli (Warisan-Labuan) in the Dewan Rakyat on Wednesday (March 16).

She said postal voting was only allowed for groups such as EC and security personnel as well as members of the media who were involved in managing and covering the election process.

However, Mas Ermieyati took note of a suggestion by Rozman to prohibit the use of mobile phones at polling stations.

"Is the prohibition of phones at polling stations to be part of the EC reforms? It is no secret that numerous breaches of EC regulations including activities that were bribes in nature, were carried out using mobile phones," Rozman said.

Mas Ermieyati said voters were only prohibited from taking ballot papers out of the polling stations.

"However, there have been instances which have gone viral showing irresponsible voters taking a photograph of their ballot papers and posting it on social media. This should not have happened," she said.

She told Rozman that his suggestion to ban mobile phones at polling stations would be brought up with the EC.

To a question by Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh (PH-Ledang), Mas Ermieyati said the EC has yet to conduct a post-mortem on the low voter turnout during the recent Johor state polls on March 12.

She acknowledged that the 54% voter turnout was below the 70% target set by the EC and was unhealthy for the nation's democratic process.

Meanwhile, Syed Ibrahim also noted that 36,729 postal voting slips were issued for the election but only 7,814 were for Malaysians living abroad while the rest were for security, health and media personnel among others.

"This (7,814) is less than 4% of the estimated 200,000 Malaysians working in Singapore," he said, adding that he wanted to know the reason for the low number who registered for postal voting.

Mas Ermieyati said it was likely that many did not bother to vote.

"They are likely to be those who (did not want) to come out and vote as they also did not bother to register as (external) voters in the first place," she said.