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The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs

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A Long Menu of Electoral Roll Fraud in Malaysia

Hong-Yee Seah

To cite this article: Hong-Yee Seah (2018) A Long Menu of Electoral Roll Fraud in Malaysia, The
Round Table, 107:6, 801-802, DOI: 10.1080/00358533.2018.1545446

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2018.1545446

Published online: 20 Nov 2018.

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THE ROUND TABLE
2018, VOL. 107, NO. 6, 801–802
https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2018.1545446

OPINION

A Long Menu of Electoral Roll Fraud in Malaysia

Hong-Yee Seah
Electoral Reform Activist, Malaysia

One major challenge Malaysia’s opposition need to overcome before winning power is
the flawed electoral roll. In that sense, their victory on 9 May 2018 is a pleasant surprise.
Any Malaysian citizen above the age of 21 and of sound mind is constitutionally
qualified as a voter and can technically register to be one with a valid national
registration identity card. Voter registration can be done through multiple avenues:
post offices, the Election Commission (EC) offices, assistant registrars and government
agencies appointed by the EC.
Voters who are newly registered or transferred-in from other constituencies are
added on a quarterly basis to so-called ‘supplementary electoral rolls’, which are later
merged with the ‘principal electoral rolls’ that contain existing voters.
Behind this simple process, however, lie at least eight types of irregularity in
Malaysia’s electoral rolls. These have been uncovered in electoral roll forensic analyses
since 2011, carried out by Engage, a non-governmental organisation:

(1) Unreasonably high numbers of voters registered at single addresses. The highest
number discovered at a single address was 80. In some cases, unrelated persons
of different ethnic origins were found at the same address; very unusual for the
communally-segregated Malaysian society.
(2) Voters without addresses. A home address is required by Article 119 of the
Federal Constitution in order for a voter to be placed in a constituency.
However, as late as 2013, the EC still allowed voters to be registered without
an address. In the 2018 election, about 15% of voters did not have any address
while another 10% had incomplete addresses.
(3) Multiple constituencies for the same addresses. It is not uncommon for neigh-
bours in the same locality, or in extreme cases families living in the same house,
to find themselves voting in different constituencies. This suggests that the
assignment of voters to constituencies by the EC is arbitrary and not based on
their exact residential location.
(4) Voter planting. Voters are sometimes deliberately registered or transferred into
certain constituencies to alter the composition of the electorate and improve the
winning odds of certain parties. Voters need not physically move into the
targeted constituencies but merely change their addresses at the National
Registration Department and proceed to file for constituency change. This
explains the large number of voters at single addresses and registration in non-

CONTACT hongyee@hongyee.org
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residential or fictitious addresses. In 2017, the EC stopped releasing detailed

information of new voters to obstruct detection.
(5) Stolen identity and involuntary registration. A few Malaysians living overseas had
found themselves being registered without their consent and knowledge.
Involuntary registration opens the door for impersonation on polling day, and
an intriguing question is: How do the schemers know who lives overseas and can
be targeted? In 2013, the EC openly admitted that at least one such involuntary
registration was committed by an assistant registrar from the ruling United
Malays National Organisation (UMNO).
(6) Deceased voters remaining on electoral rolls. Malaysian electoral rolls often drew
public attention for having many centenarians who turned out to be deceased.
The failure of the EC to strike off all deceased voters is puzzling. The identities of
deceased voters can, after all, be stolen by impersonators to vote in elections.
Such past instances gave rise to the term ‘phantom voters’, a term now extended
to all planted voters or impersonators who show up on polling day but are not
known to the locals.
(7) Suspected non-citizens on electoral rolls. In the 1990s, a group of non-Malaysian
citizens in the easternmost state of Sabah were given Malaysian national regis-
tration identity cards in order that they could vote in elections. A Royal
Commission of Inquiry investigating this matter in 2014 revealed a long list of
registered voters suspected to be non-citizens. Most of them remain on the
electoral rolls in 2018 and some have moved to other states.
(8) Voter disenfranchisement. After a successful voter registration drive by the
opposition before the 2013 election, there appeared to be concerted efforts to
prevent further registration of new voters deemed to be pro-opposition. Between
2013 and 2018, many ethnic Chinese and Indian voters had their requests for
address change or new registration frivolously objected to.

Credible electoral rolls are one of the most basic requirements for free and fair
elections. The victory of the Alliance of Hope (Pakatan Harapan, PH) in 2018 was only
possible with overwhelming support in key constituencies that overcame flawed elec-
toral rolls. The PH government must now reform the voter registration process and
clean up the present electoral rolls; and this must be done before June 2021, when the
Sarawak state election is due.