Indelible ink for elections!

Updated! A little late, but this was what was conveyed to DAP by the Election Commission chairman Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman. The use of indelible ink as per many developing countries to prevent the incidence of multiple voting by a single person will be adopted for use in the coming general election. However, Abdul Rashid gave a caveat:

- if there is a need to amend relevant legislations such as the Election (Conduct of Elections) Regulations 1981.
- the material of the ink to be used as to make it impossible to be erased quickly.

This is most encouraging considering that the EC chairperson has made plenty of nice-to-hear statements before, but when pushed by the opposition and citizen election watchdog organizations, he would made an about turn and deny the EC has any problems running elections, or that the electoral roll is full of problematic voters such as dead people. In fact, he initially dismissed the proposal to ink fingers of voters as archaic. However, considering that the general election is speculated to very likely happen by end of this year, I wonder if the EC would be fast enough to "research" the two identified issues and come up with a positive decision to enable them to implement it in the coming round. The use of indelible ink would not resolve the issue of "dead" voters coming out of the grave to vote during elections, as per the various documented cases, but at least it would resolve a big portion of the major concern regarding repeat voters.

As an aside, a DAP delegation headed by SG Lim Guan Eng met up with the EC chairperson and team on Friday presented to the EC a 10-point memorandum on reforming the electoral system to ensure clean, free, fair and impartial elections. Click here to read more.

Source: Malaysiakini

Meanwhile, PAS who welcomed the EC decision has also stated that it will meet with the EC soon to discuss two other outstanding election issues which they argue are impediments to a fair and clean election. They are calling for the abolition of postal voting which has been controversial in all elections, as well as ensuring the integrity of the electoral roll.

Update (12:49pm): Just noticed that the Sunday Star has an article on how the BN parties are rejecting the use of indelible ink in elections. Such reaction is not surprising as any advantage that they have from the current way of running elections they would like to keep. Umno's excuse of using a biometric system (because our country should be "moving forward") is not too convincing. The EC chief has said that they have looked into the use of such a system but decided against it due to the cost involved (estimated at RM30mil) as well as it being used only every 5 years or so. Considering how fast technology evolves, such a decision is more than appropriate. Also, if you've watched a recent episode of the documentary "Mythbusters", fingerprint readers are not exactly that tamper-proof as they claim to be.

MCA has an even more interesting reason on why they consider the idea "does not make sense." - they are not sure of the material used in the making of the ink. Hello? The EC has stated this is one factor which requires studying. Isn't such a concern a bit presumptuous and jumping the gun? Does it also mean if the ink material is "acceptable", MCA would change its mind? Also, rejecting it because it's a common system employed in African nations (the last I remember, India uses it too) is not good enough a reason. If our EC can only run elections in a third-worldy manner, then it is important to use third-worldly methods to ensure at least some semblance of fair and clean elections.