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KUALA LUMPURFresh out of state elections in Sabah, Malaysia is now facing a third wave of Covid-19 cases, attributed to the carelessness and complacency that marked the campaign period.
Admitting that previous containment measures were inadequate to contain the spike in cases following the Sabah state elections, the government has now issued varying degrees of movement restriction orders for Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Labuan, Putrajaya and Sabah.
As Malaysia hopes to hold some elections soon, namely the Batu Sapi parliamentary elections in December and the Sarawak state elections in June next year, and possibly the 15th general election (GE15) a year from now, health experts public are concerned. There will be repetitions of the Sabah situation as long as the pandemic is active and an effective vaccine is not available.
That is why they are calling for the expansion of voting by mail or other absentee voting methods.
“You can apply the vote by mail. So that people can vote and be counted, ”said Professor Dr. Marzuki Isahak, specialist from the Department of Occupational Safety and Health at the Universiti Malaya.
He said Malaysia needed to encourage any voting system that would prevent people from gathering in one place to vote.
Dr. Mas Ayu Said, an epidemiologist with the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the Universiti Malaya, agreed.
“We really have to prepare (for the elections). We cannot have what we had in Sabah. We must think of another way to make choices, “he said.
As of October 18, 443 travelers from Sabah, most of whom participated in the elections, tested positive for COVID-19 and generated at least 24 groups in other parts of Malaysia. From single digits in August, Malaysia posted its highest daily cases of 871 on October 18.
So, are the elections another thing Malaysians will have to adjust to making remotely due to the pandemic?
Easier said than done, said the Electoral Commission (EC). While Malaysia has a vote-by-mail system, it is not possible to expand vote-by-mail to everyone at the moment.
GETTING VIOLENT
As is, some groups can vote by mail. They include essential workers, such as health workers, police, diplomats, and most Malaysians abroad. However, ordinary Malaysians living in the country do not qualify for vote by mail.
Before Covid-19, Malaysia did not do much to expand postal voting other than allowing foreign Malaysians to cast votes by mail as of 2013. In the past, politicians and groups viewed voting by mail with suspicion, claiming that It was more susceptible to fraud and should therefore receive greater scrutiny and security.
EC member Zoe Randhawa seems disheartened when faced with the idea of opening up vote-by-mail to millions of people for GE15, while ensuring that everything is done properly and transparently in a short time.
“We have a tendency in Malaysia to mistrust our elections, (whether) rightly or wrongly. So we can’t just put this in and then people don’t trust the system. And it’s actually counterproductive and people don’t want to use the system for their votes by mail, ”he said.
He said EC is planning to expand voting by mail to a few more groups, such as the sick, hospitalized and incarcerated, although there is no specific deadline when they will be officially added to the list.
He said another group, Malays living in border countries and areas, such as Singapore, Brunei, southern Thailand and Kalimantan, is also being considered due to Covid-19.
Unlike other Malaysians abroad, people living in these areas cannot vote by mail due to their proximity to the country. In GE13 and GE14, voters had to cross the border and return home to vote.
But with the pandemic, the borders are closed and if general elections are called while the outbreaks are active, these Malaysians would not be able to vote.
Thomas Fann, founder and president of Bersih 2.0, a non-governmental group that advocates for free and fair elections, said it was important to ensure that pandemic restrictions do not deprive voters of the right to vote.
“With the Covid-19 situation, the need to be able to cast votes safely without traveling too far is very, very important,” he said.
Due to the pandemic, the number of postal voters for currently eligible groups is expected to increase enormously due to all the travel restrictions in place in the country and in the world.
According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, there were more than 1.7 million Malaysians living abroad in 2019. About 46 percent of them live in Singapore, the largest group of Malaysians abroad. according to the World Bank.
Used to dealing with thousands of postal voters, in 2018 the EC received 7,979 applications, the EC may have to deal with at least tens of thousands now.
As such, Randhawa said they should strengthen the voting-by-mail process from start to finish, from processing applications to printing and shipping ballots, and then receiving and processing votes in a timely manner.
However, the only group the EC decided not to add to the postal voters list, for now, are the elderly, who, according to doctors, are the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
NO POSTCARD VOTES FOR THE ELDERLY
Some countries will hold elections in the coming months, the most famous being the United States. There has been a sustained push by various voting rights groups to encourage older people, who are at high risk of dying from Covid-19, to vote by mail.
Which begs the question, why isn’t Malaysia doing the same for its elders?
According to Randhawa, the EC had considered adding older voters as postal voters, but ultimately rejected the idea for various reasons.
Chief among these is that the commission does not have the ability to process mail-in applications and votes from seniors (people 65 and older comprise 2.3 million of the population) on time.
“We cannot open up vote-by-mail to a huge number of people without having the ability to ensure the integrity of that process,” he said.
Randhawa said the EC also did not want to risk elders turning in faulty ballots, as they were more prone to making mistakes.
She said that votes by mail already have a higher risk of being rejected, as it requires the voter to fill out an identity declaration form in a particular way.
“There is no specific regulation that allows small errors on the form, so any small errors on the form could lead to a rejected ballot,” he said.
According to political aggregator FiveThirtyEight’s blog and studies done on absentee voting in the United States, vote-by-mail ballots have rejection rates of up to three times compared to normal votes. But rejections are primarily attributed to inexperience, not age.
ISSUE OF LEGITIMACY
Randhawa said the EC will continue to work to improve the absentee voting system and make elections more accessible in preparation for other emergencies in the future.
However, he said many of these changes may not be ready if the government calls early elections next year.
Although many may question the advisability of holding snap elections during a pandemic, which is estimated to cost RM1.2 billion, most political experts agree that an election is the only way to end political turmoil. that has clouded Malaysian politics since the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan. government in February. The current coalition government of Perikatan Nasional has been deflecting allegations of illegitimacy ever since.
The political scientist at the Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Dr. Syaruddin Awang Ahmad, said that the elections cannot wait until 2023, which is when GE15 is due, but should be held shortly after the Covid-19 situation is under control. .
“During Covid-19, the worst situation is living with a political confrontation, which I think (will not be able to) produce any plan to solve problems related to people’s lives.
“Until we can at least control or flatten the curve as the Health Ministry said, until we are very sure that we can … open all sectors, then it is the right time for us to have general elections,” he said. He said.
Fann agreed, but with a few caveats. He said elections should not be called until the EC has finished with automatic voter registration and some of the changes to the voting-by-mail system have been implemented.
The voting rights activist said holding elections while pandemic restrictions abound would deprive many voters of the right to vote, something that would cast a shadow on the legitimacy of the winner.
“When there is low voter turnout, it is still legitimate, but the fact that if less than 50 percent of the people did not vote, you cannot be sure that this is the government that represents everyone,” he said.
He said his group has already noticed the effect Covid-19 has on elections, comparing voter turnout in Sabah’s election of 66.61 percent to 82.32 percent for GE14.
To help prevent that, he said the EC should require a 21-day campaign period to allow enough time for votes to arrive by mail.
Every vote counts. Every voter is important, ”he said.Called
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