[UPDATED] Youth voters form 50% of GE15 electoral roll: EC

KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysians aged 18 to 39 comprise half or 50.3% of voters on the electoral roll, which will be used in the 15th general election (GE15).

The electoral roll as of August 2022 was officially released by the Election Commission (EC) today, after it announced November 19 as the polling date for GE15 and the state elections for Perlis, Pahang and Perak.

18 to 20-year-olds are now able to vote following Undi18 implementation, which lowered the voting age from 21. 

There are 1,393,549 voters from this age group on the electoral roll.

The total number of voters is 21,173,638. From this, 18 to 20-year-olds comprise 6.5%, 21 to 29-year-olds make up 21.7%, and those in the 30 to 39 age bracket form 22.1%.

The age breakdown of all voters is as follows:

Selangor, the most populated state, has the largest electoral roll of 3,677,848 voters, of which 273,703 are in the 18 to 20 age group.

Selangor’s 21 to 29 age bracket is made up of 845,017 voters, while voters aged 30 to 39 total up to 777,675.

After Selangor, Johor has the second largest group of Undi18 voters, at 169,919.

This is followed by Sarawak with 129,034 voters, Sabah with 127,582, Perak with 111,800 and Kedah with 106,007.

The move to lower the voting age to 18 from 21 and to allow automatic voter registration was a historical moment of bipartisanship as the bill to amend the federal constitution was passed unanimously in the Dewan Rakyat in July 2019. The law was gazetted on December 1 last year.

The 21.2 million voters for GE15 is an addition of some 6.3 million eligible to vote in the last general election in 2018. – The Vibes, October 20, 2022