POLLING and counting agents will play crucial roles in several key marginal seats in GE14 where their expertise in weeding out phantom voters could be the difference between victory and defeat for the opposition.

It is for this reason that Invoke, the big data analytics machinery, is working on recruiting, training and deploying some 100 polling and counting agents for the next polls.

The Pakatan Harapan-linked outfit is also hoping to persuade voters in safe opposition seats to forego their voting duty and choose instead to become polling or counting agents across the country.

Invoke co-founder Akmal Nasir ‎said based on the experience of the 13th general election, more volunteers at polling stations in marginal seats will likely decide the outcome of the next election.

“We can’t repeat our mistake by focusing on the campaign and neglecting the machinery,” he said.

Each candidate can appoint a polling and counting agent (Paca) to safeguard their interests at polling stations, as well as check the integrity of ballot papers and ensure that voting is conducted in accordance with the law and regulations. 

Counting agents, meanwhile, will verify the counting of ballots and keep records of the count. 

Rural challenges

Akmal said while there was little trouble in recruiting Paca for Klang Valley seats, training and assigning agents to rural seats was proving to be a challenge.

DAP’s Pensiangan coordinator Adrian Lasimbang said many volunteers in Sabah’s interior districts faced difficulties in becoming polling and counting agents.

“For those attending the training, a day leaving your village is like a day without income,” said Lasimbang.

In May 2010, DAP’s Wong Ho Leng won with a slim majority of 398 votes in Sarawak’s Bukit Assek constituency, after his polling and counting agents struck out 200 dubious votes from being counted as Barisan Nasional votes. 

Lasimbang said it made sense to hire locals to be agents in their own constituencies or areas. 

“We are training the people in the villages because polling centres are very localised, everybody knows everybody.

“And in Sabah, one of the biggest issues is phantom voters, and in order for us to spot phantom voters, we need to have locals who know everybody in that area,” he said. 

‘Risky strategy’

Invoke’s Akmal said the organisation believes that for several marginal seats, some of which the opposition lost or won by just several hundred votes in the last election, the key to victory in GE14 was the presence of polling and counting agents.

Kelana Jaya MP Wong Chen said he believed that had the opposition deployed enough Paca in 2013, BN would have been defeated.

“We rode the wave for change, but in truth, we didn’t have a system that delivered sufficient Paca in all our seats,” Wong said in a statement.

“Even in my urban area of Kelana Jaya, we were short of 50 Pacas on election day. In rural areas, we had a more pronounced Paca shortage.

“I truly believe that had we deployed enough ground troops and Pacas in 2013, we would have soundly defeated Umno-BN.”

This year, Invoke is targeting to send Pacas to 50 marginal seats, said Akmal. 

Therefore, the group is proposing a “risky” strategy, which is for several voters in constituencies with large opposition support to sacrifice their votes so they can become Pacas at rural or mixed urban-rural seats, he said.

“We are hoping for some of them to be willing to give up their votes by going to rural or marginal seats to help Paca teams there, ” said Akmal. – February 23, 2018.