SENIOR citizens were among the earliest in fulfilling their responsibilities as voters in the 16th Negeri Sembilan State Election (PRN) compared to younger ones, contributing to the encouraging turnout rate in the morning.
EC Chairman Datuk Seri Ramlan Harun said that as of 11 am, the voter turnout rate had reached 28.11 per cent after all 401 polling centres involving 1,668 channels opened simultaneously at 8 am.
According to him, based on a survey at several polling centres around Seremban, the presence of senior citizens was more noticeable than that of young people.
"We found that more senior citizens voted than young people. So, I hope young people will wake up quickly and vote.
"We expect the weather this evening not to be very good. According to the forecast, only Port Dickson is expected to have good weather until the evening, while other districts are likely to experience rain," he said.
Ramlan said the EC remained optimistic that the target voter turnout of between 72 and 75 per cent could be achieved based on the fierce competition throughout the two-week campaign period.
"We expect that we can achieve that. Throughout the campaign period, we have seen fierce competition among the contesting parties.
"We believe that all parties have taken the initiative to bring as many supporters out to vote as possible.
"We also see that the mood of the voters is very good and many are interested in participating," he said.
Meanwhile, he informed that the EC is also implementing a pilot project of the Optical Character Recognition (OCR-VA) system at seven voting channels to assess the effectiveness of using digital technology in recording voter attendance.
According to him, the pilot project only involves the process of recording voter attendance using identification cards and does not affect the voting process.
The results of its implementation will be refined before any decision is made after an engagement session with all stakeholders. – August 1, 2026
