Barking up the wrong tree?

REFORM to the current voluntary system of voter registration in Malaysia is long overdue.

Representations after representations have been made by civil society and a number of political leaders. They’ve all got good ideas to solve the problem of poor voter registration.

There does not seem to be concrete action taken by the appropriate authorities.

The question is: who are these authorities – if not the Election Commission, then who? Have we been barking up the wrong tree?

Whoever is responsible for reform and changes to the system, there appears to be a problem of attitude. The effect is that millions of Malaysians are being deprived of their rights to elect the members of parliament and state lawmakers of their choice.

Every year there are thousands who reach voting age, but can’t be bothered to register. Should we blame the present system – the system first used in the Malayan election in 1955 and never adapted to changing conditions?

Try another system

We should introduce an automatic registration.

This will entail the introduction of appropriate legislation/amendments to existing laws to cater for the new system. Enshrine the principle: any Malaysian citizen upon reaching the age of 21 years must be deemed to be an eligible voter unless barred by law. Otherwise, he or she is deemed to be a voter.

The Election Commission has not updated us with the latest statistics. Two years ago, there were some four million Malaysians who could not vote because they were not on the electoral rolls. In Sarawak, who knows the number of vote-less Malaysians?

Come the next federal election (GE14), these people will not be able to vote. And their number is increasing by the day.

Why are they not keen to register?

I have not seen or heard about an official opinion survey on why many Malaysians do not bother to register as voters. All I’ve heard so far is the coffee shop talk about the alleged indifference of young people to politics. They lack enthusiasm to register as voters under the present system. Some say they would register online, and this I am prepared to believe – some would wipe their noses online if there was an app for it.

People have been blaming the Election Commission for not being able to reform the system. Easy to say, but changing the law is not the commission’s job.

Actually, the Election Commission sticks to the letter of the law. All right, they could be a bit more proactive. But as the law stands, the commission is bound by Articles 113-120 of the Federal Constitution (valid as at Feb 20, 2016) – Conduct of elections; Constitution of Election Commission; Assistance to Election Commission; Federal constituencies; State constituencies; Method of challenging election; method of questioning election petition of no return; Qualification of electors; and Direct elections to the Senate as well as by its own laws.

Talk about solutions

Members of civil society such as Bersih (championing fair and democratic elections) and others have suggested reforms to the system and have directly appealed to the commission as the seemingly obvious authority. But I have a feeling that we have been barking up the wrong tree. It’s the politicians in power who are responsible for initiating reforms to the electoral system, not the EC as such. If the former do not make a move, then the latter cannot be expected to be proactive. I have been observing the behaviour of the election commissions all these years.

Two key areas where reforms to the electoral system are required – automatic voter registration and compulsory voting – have not been considered seriously by the authorities. The politicians in power must have their reasons, but so far they’ve not shared their valuable opinions with the rakyat.

Efforts have been made by the Election Commission to increase the number of voters by authorising political parties and NGO to help register voters.

These have not been spectacularly successful. This experiment carried out by the EC – seeking help from political parties to register voters – has been abused by certain party activists. Naturally, they would prefer their members and supporters to be registered, and in the process, they would bypass the ‘enemies’ or potential political rivals.

If the objective is to increase the number of voters in the country, then think of this twin strategy:

Automatic voter registration – Any citizen of Malaysia upon reaching the age of 21 years is deemed to be a registered voter for the purpose of laws governing conduct of elections. This will necessarily entail amendment to the relevant laws. This is the job of the lawmakers, not columnists.

Compulsory voting – This will reduce incidences of money politics – buying of voters for their votes. A voter will have no choice but to vote, with or without being paid, because of the penalty for not voting. Just think – not only will he not get paid for voting, he will be fined for not voting! Some village folk will be amazed at such a turnaround.

This system works in a couple of advanced countries; it should work over here. It will work in the rural areas where people are law abiding; the voters go and vote on pain of penalty; they will vote without or without the usual ‘incentive’.

Try this twin strategy. It might just work.

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