KUALA LUMPUR, May 9 – The Election Commission (EC) has clarified that besides the standard ‘X’, check marks and dots are also acceptable on ballot papers.
EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof said any mark is acceptable as long as it was made within a candidate’s column.
“Words are not accepatable, but a dot, tick or any other mark that can be constituted as having the intention of choosing a candidate is valid,” he told Bernama here.
“In our guideline, we stated that any mark is accepted and not just an X providing it is not made in all columns,” he said on the 332,297 spoiled ballots in the 13th general election last Sunday compared to 324,120 in 2008.
He said the number of spoiled votes showed that many Malaysians were still unaware of how to mark their ballot papers, resulting in hundreds of thousands being rejected.
Besides that, he said it was possible that voters intentionally spoilt their ballot papers because they were not sure who to choose.
“There are many reasons…the first could be they don’t know who to choose or maybe they don’t know what to write or they don’t understand,” he said.
Of the spoiled votes in the 13th general election, 171,556 ballots were for parliamentary seats while 151,741 others were for state seats.
– BERNAMA
