Many of 128,000 Malaysian voters above 85 missing from electoral roll

KUALA LUMPUR - A majority of Malaysians aged 85 years and above don’t figure in the country’s electoral records.

According to a News Strait Times report, the names of most of the 128,318 voters in this age group are missing from Election Commission records.

“Death is where our problem starts,” Election Commission Chairman Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof said.

The only legally accepted proof of death, which enables the commission to remove the names of the deceased, is the death certificate issued by the National Registration Department (NRD), and many Malaysians are not aware of this, the paper said.

Last year, Aziz had ordered the commission to check on 10 percent of the ageing voters, and found that many of these voters were “missing”.

He further said that most of the voters no longer lived at their registered addresses, and that some of the localities had even been rezoned or having new names.

Evidently, a number of voters have died but their families have not informed the NRD.

Azis also said that he was shocked to see his mother’s name, who died in 2002, still registered as a voter at the time he was appointed commission chairman in November 2008. (ANI)