THE distribution of 3,495 postal ballots to the respective six states for the elections are underway, Undi18 co-founder Tharma Pillai said.

He said that as of 3pm today their volunteers had left their collection and tallying centre in Kuala Lumpur to Terengganu and Kelantan. 

“For the other four states our volunteers had left at 6pm today. We had received 43.8% of the total overseas votes which are 7,972. 

“We expect the ballots to reach their respective constituencies by tomorrow morning and throughout polling day,” he told The Malaysian Insight. 

He said that collection and sorting of ballots at the centre had ended at 5pm today.

“We had to sort out the largest collection of ballots which will be flown to Kedah, Terengganu, Penang and Kelantan. 

“We still expect a small number of ballots to still come in and we will try to coordinate with our volunteers or the public to help send the votes back to the respective constituencies (to be counted).”

According to the Election Commission, a total of 7,972 postal votes were sent out for category 1B (Malaysians residing abroad), 4,705 for category 1C (agencies and organisations) and 1,727 for overseas absentee voters. 

Postal voters have to mark the ballot paper, fill in the identity declaration form (Form 2) and immediately return it to the returning officer concerned before 5pm on polling day. 

About 18 countries had participated in the programme with the bulk of ballots coming from Singapore, United Kingdom and Australia. 

Tharma said the tallying and collection of ballots were done at the Kuala Lumpur & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. 

He said they started collections of ballots on Monday and started officially sorting out the votes on Wednesday.

He said they have learnt to mitigate issues they had faced from previous elections. 

“We now know what the challenges are and how to address them.

“For example previously we didn’t have enough volunteers to do the sorting of ballots which could take anything from two to seven hours. 

“This time we managed to get around 60 volunteers and so far the process went smoothly.”

Undi18 is in collaboration with VoteMalaysia, Malaysia Student Global Alliance and other student bodies internationally to bring back votes. –  August 11, 2023.