If I'm the PM: SPR

Ok, I cannot stand anymore the political situation in Malaysia! So I'm going to write a series that consist of ideas that I think should be adopted for the betterment of our beloved country. Some of this ideas are so simple and efficient that I wonder why the people up there never think of it (or they just ignore it)? So, I shall begin with the reform of SPR.

If I am the PM of Malaysia, I will change the law on how Suruhanjaya Pilihanraya Malaysia (SPR) manage the voter registration.

The main question is: Why must SPR maintain a separate election voter database when we can use the one maintained by Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN)?

Let's look at what JPN do:

1. Registering of Malayisan citizens.
2. Issuing identity card.
3. De-registering of Malaysian citizens (at the time of death).

I believe that JPN has maintain a good record of dead and alive Malaysian citizens. In addition to that, the citizen's address is up-to-date (by law you need to change if you stay in one place more than 3 months). This database is of better quality than the one maintained by SPR (we all know there are voters that are over 120 years old in the SPR database).

So, this is the proposed procedure for SPR during election time:

1. Set the election date.
2. Go to JPN and get the voter list that consist of Malayisan citizen that is 21 years old during election day.
3. Sort the list based on address.
4. Set the voting area based on address.
5. Publish the list.
6. During election day, allows voters that present an identity card with details that are the same as in the database and the face must match the person that presents the identity card (to prevent forgery).
   

Easy? With computerization, Step 1-5 should not take more than 1 day.

The advantages are:

1. Reduce the duplication of resources in registering voters (save cost).
2. Accurate list of voters (or no phantom voters).
3. All eligible citizens can vote (better democratic process).
   

The disadvantages: Nil.

Of course there are some fine tuning that must be done with the above procedure. For instant, the address for every street and kampung must be standardized (i.e. Klang or Kelang). Additionally, I did not mention how to handle voters from the army and police or postal voters.

If you have a good idea for our government, please email me and I will put it up here. This is our country and the politicians are screwing it. We must stop them before they destroy Malaysia.