This is one of the way (non-violence) to bring our message to the Government.

Don’t just sit there, stand up and be counted!

Why do we need to reform the Election Commission?

1) Gerrymandering. The discrepancy between number of voters in voting areas is too great. The smallest parliamentary seat (Federal Territory, Putrajaya) has only 6,608 voters while the parliamentary seat for Kapar in Selangor has 112,224 voters. What this means is that one vote in the Putrajaya parliamentary constituency is equivalent to 17 votes in the Kapar constituency.

2) Phantom voters. A common tactic is to ‘buy’ the identity card of the voters. Party members from the ruling parties will then vote on the voters’ behalf. Random checking of a person’s identity must be conducted using those finger print checking device (like the bank use). Any voting done on another person’s identity must be made a serious offence under the election law.

3) Postal votes. The rules on postal voting must be reviewed, tightened and amended. The current rule favours the ruling party as the armed forces personnel and policemen who vote by ‘postal voting’ would obviously not jeopardize their career or promotion prospect by voting for the opposition. Voting under postal voting is not secret as it is under the watchful eyes of the senior officers.

4) Spoiled votes. How do we define spoiled votes. It is very easy to turn good votes into spoiled votes (by adding one more x to the ballot paper). Are spoiled votes being verified and watched over by the party representatives? In marginal areas in which the winning margin is razor thin, the so-called spoiled votes need to be scrutinized.

I suspect most of the fiery Internet-generation Chinese guys and girls haven’t registered to vote, or know how to for that matter. This would be a chunk that would be very significant I think…

[ GhL ] : Good for you, JK; Please help to urge everyone you know (and everyone they know) to register themselves and vote smartly in the coming election. The cutoff date is approaching rapidly, as our scintillating Election Commission claims it requires 3 months to register a voter, and UMNO will try desperately to hold the election by March, before the resurgent Anwar Ibrahim once again becomes eligible to stand for election.

Ladies and gents, living in a country doesn’t simply involve doing business with ‘our fellow citizens’. We all have the responsibility to serve our countrymen. We’ve put that aside too many times.

GhL, anyone with an internet connection is a potential supporter – but internet penetration in Malaysia is as we all know, limited. To reach out to everyone, we’re going to need to adopt other methods. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat as an example.

[ GhL ] : Agreed, our chosen medium has limitations in reaching out to the masses, although it is improving by the day; we need to broaden our reach to build the critical mass necessary to effect change.

Technically, what we civil society bloggers are practising now is the digital form of ’samizdat’.

I would like to add that if even it is possible to convert that 15% apathetic Chinese, it won’t translate well into seats in Parliament due to gerry-mandering. But we’ll take it a step at a time.

[ GhL ] : Yeah, we need to stop the rot now before the continued subversion-corruption of the Election Commission and other state institutions renders our deeply-flawed elections even more meaningless.

An idea: I’m going to write to some international election watch NGO’s to try and get them to send election observers to Malaysia.

[ GhL ] : The 5%-5%-15% estimate comes from me, based on my general observations on the ground that roughly 20% of the Chinese population are diehard opposition supporters, up to 20% are BN mercenaries/brainwashed, and the remaining majority of 60% being mainly fence-sitters/opportunists whose political commitments waver like candles in the breeze. Sorry I can’t back up my numbers with a Gallup poll

But seriously, there is much work to be done to secure the commitment of the fence-sitting Chinese.