PUTRAJAYA: The Election Commission (EC) has rebutted claims on social media that advance voting had started, pointing out that it will be carried out on April 30 for servicemen and police officers.
EC secretary Datuk Kamaruddin Baria said it is also untrue that they have been unable to manage the distribution of ballots for advance voting as claimed by a Facebook post that carried a picture of a purported ballot paper.
“The EC denies that advance voting has been carried out for those who qualify as advance voting will only be done on April 30.
“We also deny that the photo on social media was from the EC,” he said while reading out a prepared statement during a press conference here.
A post featuring a picture of a ballot paper went viral on social media on Tuesday, claiming that advance voting had started and that the EC had failed to manage it properly.
To a question, Kamaruddin said the EC could not confirm or deny the authenticity of the ballot paper in the picture but pointed out that it had already sent out postal votes to those who qualify within the country on Tuesday.
“It is possible that someone had taken a picture of the postal vote and posted it on social media. It is an offence to (publicly) post a picture of a ballot,” he said, although he declined to elaborate on the punishment if found guilty of such an act.
Kamaruddin noted that such postings on social media were irresponsible as they could confuse the public and paint the EC in a bad light.
“I have lodged a police report and we will leave it to the police to take further action,” he said.
A total of 234,905 postal votes have already been sent out domestically.
Meanwhile, Kamaruddin said that the first batch of the 6,360 postal votes for overseas voters were sent out last night.
The EC has also started displaying the names of 136,035 voter applications registered in the first quarter of this year.
Kamaruddin said the names will be displayed at 949 display centres nationwide and can also be viewed on the EC’s website
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