JOHOR BARU, Sept 24 — A Johor PKR lawmaker has called for the postponement of the party elections in the state on September 30 due to problems with the e-voting system when the polls started last weekend.
Tebrau MP Steven Choong Shiau Yoon, who will be defending his post as the Tebrau PKR division chief, said PKR’s new electronic voting (e-voting) system had ended in chaos in Kedah and Penang last Saturday.
“The start of the party election was unsatisfactory for every voter. So I call on the PKR Central Election Committee (JPP) to stop the e-voting immediately and postpone the Johor election, which is set for September 30,” he said in a statement today.
In addition, Choong recommended that the JPP provide proper and efficient training to the supervisors in-charge of the polling process.
He said issues that arose on the first day of voting should be taken seriously by JPP to prevent them from recurring in other states.
“Lastly, I hope the JPP will postpone or stall the party’s Johor elections so that all complaints against the weaknesses of the e-voting system can be resolved.
“If the scheduled party elections in Johor should continue as scheduled, I hope the party can guarantee that the manual voting system can be implemented,” said Choong.
Tebrau PKR has 3,279 division members who are eligible to vote.
There were commotion during the PKR elections in Penang and Kedah due to dissatisfaction among some party members, resulting in members fighting and throwing chairs.
The results of the PKR Kedah elections were invalidated and a new election would be held following several problems, particularly of a technical nature and shortcomings from staff responsible for overseeing the voting process.
This also caused the election process for Perlis and Perak to be postponed to a new date.
The 2018 PKR elections, using the system of electronic voting or e-voting for the first time, involved the posts of deputy presidents, vice-presidents, AMK (Youth) chief, Wanita chief and members of the Central Leadership Council.
Also, at these elections, the members will pick their representatives at the divisional level, namely the chief, deputy chief, vice-chiefs and 15 divisional committee members as well as the divisional Youth chief, Youth deputy chief, Youth vice-chiefs and 15 Youth committee members.
A total of 800,000 PKR members around the country are eligible to vote in the elections.
