SHOULD YOU BE SURPRISED?

Why did 60,000 Malaysians march in protest on 10 Novermber 2007? Why did they brave the police tear-gassing and chemical wash? They wanted a clean, fair election? Did we get one in March 2008? If it was clean and fair, the Pakatan Rakyat would have won Terengganu and Perlis!

Did the Election Commission cheat again at Permatang Pauh? Of course they did without batting an eye.

Consider these:

• In the Permatang Pauh by-election of August 2008, media widely reported that over 900 voters were "missing" from the by-election roll, and "mysteriously" replaced by other voters.(MalaysiaKini article)
• SPR reacted with indignation, but its press release only explained half the missing voters.
• Our investigation found that 400+ voters actually did not go missing.
• They were police postal voters who had had their IC numbers slightly modified, such as from R0012345 to RF12345, RT012345 to RFT12345, and G0012345 to G12345.

• Because IC numbers are the only unique identification for all voters, researchers comparing old and new electoral rolls can easily interprete the bulk change in IC numbers as missing and replaced voters.
• We need to compare the changed ICs pair-by-pair to ascertain they are the same names and directly-related but differently-formatted ICs. We provide a detailed table for the Permatang Pauh police ICs here in Table C in an earlier report.
• The issue is not only confusing to political parties and NGOs.
• The fact that SPR did not explain this change clearly means SPR internally must have also taken some time to sort this out, or figure it too complicated to try to explain immediately.

Could it be that this culture of cheating at the polls began after the 1969 GE? For the first time the Alliance realised that they could lose at elections and they were not going to lose any elections at all cost, in the future. Probably, yes?

So will they cheat again, even with a new Election Commission chief? Can the EC Chairman, in his maiden assignment, sleep peacefull and say that he ran a clean and fair election in Kuala Terengganu?

Consider these:

Returning Officers aka Mayor of Terengganu, Resigns - allededly for campaigning for BN

1001 Police IC Changes = 1001 Potential Phantoms

SPR again slightly modified all police IC numbers. The same police voters actually remain registered in KT. But researchers who compare electoral rolls using IC numbers may mistake them as 1001 missing voters and - at the same time - another 1001 newly added voters. Such confusion had accounted for half the mystery and uproar about "900+ missing voters" in the Permatang Pauh by-election in August 2008.

Table below shows actual examples of the types of changes made to police postal voter IC number in KT:

• Police IC numbers starting with R are converted to RF.
• Police IC numbers starting with RT are converted to RFT
• Starting zeros in number are eliminated.
• Some numbers that had 3 leading zeros are shortened to only 4 digits, such as G8495.
• We count 18 police IC numbers that have only 4 digits, following the letter "G" or "I."

Table: Actual Examples of Police Postal Voter IC Modification in KT (Mafrel)

Gazetted 20080205	Gazetted 20081205
GE12	By election
R0116871	RF116871
R0099584	RF99584
RT012038	RFT12038
RT009763	RFT9763
G0110312	G110312
G0011274	G11274
G0008495	G8495
I0113340	I113340
I0013732	I13732

KT's Mainly Young Voters Include 46 Centenerians

67% of Kuala Terengganu voters are 21 to 49 year old. KT contains 187 voters aged 90 to 99, a deletion of 30 voters in this age group from the GE12 roll. However, There remains 46 voters aged 100 and more, a deletion of only 1 voter since the GE12 roll. Unlike Permatang Pauh, SPR did not completely delete the 100-and-older voters across the board.

First, some surprises and guesses:

• SPR had just gazetted a country-wide electoral roll a few days before, on Nov 28, 2008. Why doesn't SPR use that roll? Why does the SPR gazette a new roll on 2008 Dec 5 just for this by-election?
• If you try to examine SPR's Website for the Nov 28 roll (http://daftarj.spr.gov.my/daftarj/daftar.aspx), you will find that you cannot examine the KT portion of voters.
• You will need to go to the specific KT By-Election verification page here: http://daftarj.spr.gov.my/semakp36/prayakecil.aspx
• SPR did not delete voters 100-and-older across the board, as it did in Permatang Pauh. This could mean SPR is more careful to follow deletion procedure this time.
• SPR deleted 124 voters in the 80-89 year age group (10% of group), 30 voters in the 90-99 age group (13%), but only deleted 1 in the 100 year and older age group (2%).
• This could mean SPR had already cleaned up the KT roll before GE12, and the remaining 100-and-older voters are those who are really hard to delete due to a lack of documentation.
• There are only 2 voters born before 1900 in this by-election electoral roll.

• There was a significant percentage (12%, or 30 out of 243) of voter name amendments among voters aged 90 and above, after GE12. A cursory look indicates these are corrections and changes that improve consistencies, such as changing all "B" to "Bin" and "Bt" to "Binti." We will discuss this positive improvement in the next blog entry.

• KT's two oldest voters, literally, have been moved to the end of voting queue, again literally, by having their NoSiri and Saluran changed to the last.

and finally:

8,388 or 10% of KT Voters Have No house address

10.5% of voters in Kuala Terengganu are registered without a house number (NoRumah), even after excluding postal voters. SPR's voter address registration seems archaic, with 35% voters nationwide without house numbers, and without ZIP code. Why not automatically register voters and use MyKad address?

Background:

• Nation-wide, 35% of voters were registered with the SPR without a house number (NoRumah) for GE12 electoral roll gazetted on 2008 Feb 5. See NoRumah? No Rumah? More than 1/3 voters homeless?
• Sabah led the blurry pack, with 92% of voters not registering their house number.
• Terengganu state overall had 35.2% voters without house numbers.
• The relatively urbanized Kuala Terengganu (P036) in 2008 Feb 5 had 10.6% voters without NoRumah.
• Using the latest KT roll of 2008 Dec 5, we found only slight improvement to 10.5% voters without NoRumah.

• In Permatang Pauh by-election roll dated 20080731, 1,020 or 1.8% voters were without house numbers. See this report.
• Our analysis exclude postal voters. Had postal voters been included, the percentage will be even higher by about 1% to 3%.
• Our analysis also tries to standardize variations of entries, such as "-" and other text that denotes blank, such as "tiada","null","*", etc.

And don't forget Primula Park Royal employees surrendering copy of their MyKad and temporary ICs being given out by the State registration department late Wednesday night.

PAS NEEDS TO BE EXTRA VIGILANT.