SPR OLDEST VOTER?: A screenshot shows an electoral roll entry for a woman born in 1896.
KUCHNG: The Election Commission (EC) does not rule out the possibility that the latest electoral roll still contains the names of voters who have passed away.
State EC deputy director Suriani Saruji said the EC cannot delete names from the electoral roll until the commission is notified by the National Registration Department (NRD) that the voters have died.
“Till then we will not delete any names from the electoral roll. We have no right to do so. As such we don’t deny that some voters have died but their names are still on the electoral roll.
“This happens when the death of the deceased was never reported to NRD and once we don’t receive any information on the status of the voters, we have to consider that they are still around,” she said.
Suriani added that the most common problem was when deceased registered voters did not have any relatives or next of kin.
“Sometimes we do the verification ourselves, but when we visited the address as per the electoral roll, many times we discovered that the person was no longer living there and the place has been converted into something else, such as housing estates or what not,” she added.
To ensure that the names of those who have already passed away can be deleted, she called for every death to be reported to the NRD, which would in turn inform the EC to update the electoral roll.
Suriani was responding to the enquiry of a man identified only as Julaihi, 50, who accidentally came across a voter on the electoral roll who would be 117 if she is still alive.
“I was surprised to see the age of the voter. She must be the oldest voter around this election, if really she is still around,” said Julaihi, who pointed out that very few people live up to 100. #myvote13 #ge13