Malaysia must move towards e-voting soon

KUANTAN - The time has come for Malaysia to reform the nation's electoral system by implementing an electronic voting process, or e-voting.

Umno Supreme Council member Datuk Seri Mohd Sharkar Shamsudin said e-voting has already been implemented in other countries for over 20 years, such as Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Namibia, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, and Switzerland.

"When we talk about online systems, I believe a majority of the public is aware of them, as they use them to pay utility bills, renew vehicle insurance, pay summons, shop, bank, and pay tithes, which are all done at their fingertips.

"To implement an online voting process is not impossible. All this time we believe in the security of online banking transactions involving thousands of ringgits; why wouldn’t we have a secure system to send a vote during elections?" he said in a statement on Thursday.

Sharkar said it is not a major challenge for the government to implement an e-voting process with the technological developments we have now, including household internet access, which has been increased to 96 per cent in 2022 through a study by the Malaysian Statistics Department (DOSM).

He said that through e-voting, the process would be more flexible, especially in the upcoming state elections.

"Voters would be able to cast their votes from any location because the current system is incurring a lot of costs, energy, and time, as well as additional commitments.

"There would no longer be any issues with leaving homes to cast votes. Even during floods, votes can be cast. The issue of the cost of having to travel back home is no longer a problem," he said.

He said the country could not continue implementing the traditional voting process as there is so much hassle involved, such as casting votes at a certain location and lining up in queues awaiting their turns to exercise their responsibilities.

"There were many debates on the effectiveness of the e-voting process, but it could bring many benefits to the country and its people.

"It would reduce the total errors on ballot papers as well as increase the total voters as it would enable voting to be done from any location," he said.

He said the government and the Election Commission (EC) must perform further testing on this suggestion to enable the e-voting process to be implemented in the 16th general election (GE16).