MELAKA: The Election Commission (EC) will pilot a document-scanning system for the 16th Melaka Election, says its chairman Datuk Seri Ramlan Harun.
He said the optical character recognition for voter attendance (OCR-VA) system would automatically record and mark voters' attendance by scanning their identification documents.
He said the initiative was part of efforts to digitalise election processes, speed up checks and attendance recording, reduce manual marking errors and improve polling-day efficiency.
"The implementation of OCR-VA does not change existing voting procedures.
"Voters only need to turn up at their polling centres as usual and present their identification documents to election workers for verification before proceeding to vote," he said after chairing a special meeting on preparations for the state election at a hotel here on Wednesday (Oct 7).
The EC has set polling for Nov 14, with nomination on Oct 31 and early voting on Nov 10.
Ramlan said the electoral roll as at Sept 22, which will be used for the state polls, has 687,697 registered voters comprising 675,166 ordinary voters, 9,769 military personnel and their spouses and 2,762 police personnel.
The election will involve all 28 state seats, with 271 polling centres comprising 31 early voting centres and 240 ordinary polling centres.
A total of 1,263 polling streams will be available.
Ramlan said 11,175 election workers would be appointed, estimated to cost RM28.45mil.
The election follows the dissolution of the Melaka State Assembly on Sept 23.
In the 2021 Melaka Election, Barisan Nasional won 21 of 28 seats to form the state government, while Pakatan Harapan secured five and Perikatan Nasional two.
