CONGRATULATIONS to all voters for casting their precious votes during the recent Sungai Bakap by-election. However, it is very sad to notice the presence of many elderly voters who had to spend their valuable time and energy to perform their voting duty at the polls.

There was also a voter who suffered from stroke and arrived with an ambulance to cast her vote in this by-election. Similar with previous by-elections, voter turnout in this by-election was also not high. As such, the time has come for our Election Commission (EC) to take proactive steps to reform our electoral process by implementing electronic voting or e-voting in order to make the voting process easy, comfortable and accessible by all voters.

We cannot continue relying on the old way of voting process which is time consuming, exhausting and wasteful. The country needs to make use of the existing technology to conduct the voting process in order to make the election more effective. We need to follow the step taken by the Baltic country of Estonia which has implemented online voting or electronic voting (e-voting) for their country election very recently.

According to the new law, Estonian citizens will soon be able to vote from their mobile devices, such as phones and tablets after the country’s parliament (Riigikogu) passed a law to standardize and set the standards for this process. The law will enter into force in coming October. Electronic voting in Estonia gained popularity in 2001 with the “e-minded” coalition government. In 2005, it became the first nation to hold legally binding general elections over the Internet with their pilot project for municipal elections. Estonian election officials declared the electronic voting system a success and found that it withstood the test of real-world use. Internet voting was also used in the 2007 Estonian parliamentary election, another world first.

In 2023 parliamentary elections, for the first time, more than half of the total votes were cast over the internet. It looks like the recent legislative amendments will possibly make Estonia the first country in the world to allow voting through a smartphone, something that has long been expected to become a common practice in the future, what with the advent of technology in practically every aspect of daily life. The legislative changes will create preconditions for the use of Smart ID for personal identification, which will allow the use of mobile devices.

How about us? How much longer do we want to burden voters in spending their valuable time and energy on the face-to-face voting process? We already living in the age of technology where many high-tech applications can be design and utilize to make people life easier and more convenient. We should make use all the existing high-tech applications to allow voters to vote through online instead of face to face voting process at the polling station. Remember, during the recent six state elections, an 83-year-old woman died while casting her vote at SK Rokan in Negri Sembilan.

Many voters also have to travel long distance and endure heavy traffic in order to go back to their hometown and cast their vote. The traditional way of voting seems very time consuming, requires huge energy and involves a lot of money. If we still recall, during the 15th general election last year, it coincided with the monsoon season which caused floods in certain parts of the country. Some voters have to endure the floodwaters and face the risk of getting hurt in order to cast their precious vote. This should have not happened as it could disturb voters’ focus and interrupt the entire voting process. As such, the time has come for our country to fully utilise all the available technologies and implement online voting or electronic voting (e-voting).

With the existence of many modern applications, electronic voting can be carried out in several ways. Electronic voting technology can include punched cards, optical scan voting systems and specialized voting kiosks (including self-contained direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DRE). It can also involve transmission of ballots and votes via telephones, private computer networks, or the internet.

If we are not ready or cannot fully implement the electronic voting process, we can at least try to implement a hybrid voting process in the country. A hybrid voting process is a voting process that combines the best of both online and offline voting. In a hybrid voting process, voters can choose to cast their ballots either in person or online. This gives everyone the option to vote in the way that works best for them. The EC should look into the above proposal seriously. We need to examine the country’s existing election laws, including the Federal Constitution, before implementing an electronic voting process. – July 9, 2024.

* Muzaffar Syah Mallow is associate professor at the Faculty of Shariah and Laws, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.