Malaysia election: Six reports of people not being able to vote, say Sabah police

The voters arrived at their polling stations and were told that someone with the same identification card details had already cast their votes. ST PHOTO: ARIFFIN JAMAR

KOTA KINABALU (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Sabah police have received six reports of voters not being able to cast their ballots in Malaysia's general election Polling Day on Wednesday (May 9).

The voters claimed that "someone with the same ICs as them" had already voted.

Sabah police chief Ramli Din said these reports were received as of noon on Wednesday and will be investigated under the Election Offences Act.

"These voters arrived at their polling stations and were told that someone with the same identification card details had already cast their votes," he said.

"Three were reported in Tawau and one each in Papar, Lahad Datu and Kota Kinabalu," he said after visiting the polling centre at SRJK (C) Chung Hwa here at 3.10pm.

Datuk Ramli said that for this polling centre, 12 out of the 14 polling stations have been closed. "Overall, everything is good in Sabah and we hope it will be so until end of polling at 5pm," he said.

All district policemen were monitoring the polling stations, he added.

Separately, voters from Tawau to Kota Kinabalu claimed that some ballot boxes here were incorrectly labelled, with votes for parliamentary seats being placed in boxes meant for state seats, and vice versa.

In one case in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah Pakatan Harapan chairman and Parti Keadilan Rakyat candidate for Api Api state seat Christina Liew asked officials at a polling station to switch the boxes after a voter refused to cast her ballot papers until the error was rectified.

The voter, who wished to remain anonymous, said that after marking her ballot papers, she checked to ensure that she was placing them in the correct boxes.

"I discovered that all the state ballot papers were in the parliamentary box, and vice versa.

"They told me to just deposit the papers and that they would make the change later.

"I refused and asked them to change and rectify the boxes first," she said on Wednesday.

Liew then walked in and found that the boxes were wrong and prompted the Election Commission (EC) officers to make the necessary changes.

When contacted, an official at the EC in Putrajaya said the complaints would be investigated.

Overall, voting in Sabah was generally smooth, but voters in some polling centres complained that there were no clear queues for the various streams.

As of 3.08pm, voter turnout in Sabah was at 60.12 per cent. There are a total of 1,117,337 registered voters and 738 polling centres in Sabah.

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