COMMENT | Addressing the 'address' problem in postal voting

COMMENT | With the recent proclamation of emergency by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the by-election in Batu Sapi will not proceed for now (only to be held after the emergency has concluded).

This has prompted calls from various NGOs like Bersih to expand postal voting in order to allow the Batu Sapi by-election to proceed safely in view of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In this process, an unaddressed issue was unpacked.

Based on the Election Commission's (EC) data, of the 32,962 registered voters in Batu Sapi, there is an estimated 16,000 voters which have incomplete addresses. These voters only have general addresses without house numbers.

As a result of incomplete addresses, the implementation of postal voting for voters in Batu Sapi would be more complicated. Hence, this by-election highlighted an issue that is rarely discussed in depth - the issue of addresses in the country.

We, Tindak Malaysia, classify the housing address discrepancy (for both electoral and non-electoral purposes) issue into a few types