KUALA LUMPUR: The Election Commission (EC) has been urged to extend the campaign period to 21 days from 14 days currently and work with Malaysian embassies abroad so Malaysians abroad can take part in the democratic process.
VoteMalaysia Coalition's (VMC) Qyira Yusri said the EC can address logistics issues by allowing Malaysians to vote physically at embassies overseas or to mail their ballots to the embassies instead of their respective returning officers (RO).
"Malaysian embassies cannot conduct such activities without the authorisation of the EC and we recommend the EC to explore this option.
"If direct involvement by the Foreign Ministry is deemed impossible, we recommend that the ministry plays a role in coordinating efforts with volunteers and non-governmental organisations to ease the process of postal voting," she said during a press conference at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall on Saturday (July 8).
"Overseas voters have insufficient time to mail back their ballots. Therefore, extending the campaign period to 21 days will provide sufficient time," she said.
Qyira also said among the issues encountered by postal voters, human error was the most prevalent.
Other issues were ballots dispatched without a witness; ballots from different countries with similar names being swapped; and ballots without RO address, causing ballots to be invalid.
She said the EC could provide tracking numbers when ballots were dispatched to voters.
"The EC can further ease the registration process by improving efforts to inform voters of the application deadline as postal voters," she said.
Qyira added that the EC website could also be improved to ease the registration process and avoid the site from crashing when there is a surge of registrations.
