KOTA KINABALU – The Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) has urged the authorities to launch a probe into the “shocking” spike in voter numbers in the state.
The party pointed to the latest electoral roll released by the Election Commission (EC), which revealed a 53.9% (or 574,120) increase in new voters, from 1,064,686 in 2008 to 1,638,806 in 2022.
SAPP President Datuk Seri Yong Teck Lee alleged the surge could be due to a high number of “dubious” voters that came about from the “Project IC” scandal.
“This is because many of the holders of dubious citizenship were not registered as voters because they fear detection by the authorities if they surface to register physically and personally at the EC or other government offices.
“The automatic registration of voters was created by the former Pakatan Harapan/Warisan government in 2019.
“But once the automatic registration of voters came into effect, all the Mykads/ICs in the JPN (National Registration Department) database were automatically registered as voters,” he said in a statement here today.
He claimed that a preliminary review of the 2022 election roll revealed that many of the new voters were aged above 30 years old, with some as old as 60 and who are categorised as “Lama Layak, Baru Daftar” (“Long Entitled, Newly Registered”) voters.
Yong said it was “impossible” that so many middle-aged people had only just registered to vote.
“Most, if not all, genuine citizens above 30-year-olds are already voters before 2018.
“Therefore, this category of new middle-aged voters, are almost all suspicious voters. These are not the Undi18 voters,” he said.
He also called on the EC to conduct a forensic audit and in-depth probe to filter out the “dubious” voters before polling day.
Yong also said the EC and police should warn holders of dubious Mykads that they face arrest if they are caught. – The Vibes, October 17, 2022
