Act on electoral list discrepancies, Guan Eng tells Election Commission

Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has expressed concern over inconsistencies between the number of voters registered by the Election Commission (EC) and the number of residents recorded iin certain areas.

The DAP secretary-general said his office has detected that there are, in two instances, more voters than the total residents recorded by the National Registration Department (NRD).

“You cannot have more voters than residents,” Lim told reporters yesterday, urging the EC to clarify and act on the “phantom voters” it had recorded. He cited EC figures of 1,600 Indian voters in Terengganu, even though the NRD has recorded only 1,441 Indian residents there.

In another instance, the EC stipulated there are 116,907 Malay voters in Sabah when only 115,349 Malays were recorded by the NRD as residents in the state.

He said the anomaly was spotted after the DAP checked on electoral data released by the EC, which was published in The Edge recently. “Why is the EC not hiring a ‘ghost-buster’ to catch these phantoms?” he asked.

Lim, who is also Bagan MP, said this at the Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) voter registration exercise at the Apollo Market at Raja Uda in Butterworth. Also present were state executive councillors Phee Boon Poh, who is Sungai Puyu assemblyman, and assemblyman for Bagan Jermal, Lim Hock Seng.

Lim said the PR is targeting to register some 120,000 new voters in Penang before the next general election. He said there are currently some 210,000 eligible voters who are still not registered, out of a total of about 920,000 registered and unregistered eligible voters in the state.

“We will be conducting our registration exercise on a monthly basis,” he said, adding that it is estimated that 80% of people who register with the help of a party would usually vote for it - Agencies.