About 21.1 million Malaysians eligible to vote

PUTRAJAYA: About 21.1 million Malaysians will be eligible to vote in the 15th General Election, with nearly 1.4 million of them aged between 18 and 20, says the Election Commission (EC).

This is an increase of more than six million voters compared to GE14 in 2018, when there were 14.9 million registered voters.

The big jump in eligible voters was due to the “Undi18” constitutional amendment gazetted last year, which lowered the minimum voting age from 21 to 18.

The amendment also removed the need for voter registration, which means Malaysians who turn 18 are automatically registered as voters.

The effects of the increase in voters however remains to be seen and will depend on the voter turnout for GE15.

However, it is expected to be lower than the 82.32% in GE14 in 2018.

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The Johor election last March was the first polls to be held after Undi18 was implemented, and the voter turnout was only 54%.

EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Ghani Salleh said the electoral roll used for GE15 will be the August 2022 Supplementary Roll which has been updated up to Oct 9.

“The electoral roll for GE15 involves 20,905,366 ordinary voters, 146,737 army personnel, 118,794 police officers and 2,741 overseas absent voters,” said Abdul Ghani.

According to data from the GE15 electoral roll, 1,393,549 of the eligible voters are below 21 years old.

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Selangor has the highest number of 18 to 20-year-old voters with 273,703, followed by Johor (169,919 voters), Sarawak (129,034) and Sabah (127,582).

The EC said the cost to conduct GE15 is estimated to be RM1.01bil – making it the most expensive polls to date.

The previous general election was said to cost about RM500mil.

Abdul Ghani said some 365,515 workers will be assigned to conduct GE15.

“A total of 9,536 polling centres consisting of 39,318 voting streams will be utilised for this election,” he said.

Voters wishing to find information on their polling centres can check from Oct 31 onwards at the EC’s portal at http://mysprsemak.spr.gov.my or through the MySPR Semak mobile phone app.

They can also contact the commission’s hotline at 03-889 2701 and 03-888 8040.