Julau election valid, says PKR
The party’s election committee says it is satisfied with the explanation from its IT team.
PETALING JAYA: In an about-turn, PKR today declared as valid its elections in Julau, Sarawak, which were marred by allegations of cheating and software tampering.
The party’s central election committee said it was satisfied with the explanation from its computer experts handling the e-voting system, as well as the denial from a US-based software company whose app Prey was blamed for wiping out data on devices.
“The decision is based on an analysis of vote count which showed that all data was safe and successfully uploaded to the Cloud storage although data on six tablets was found to have been erased through the Prey Anti-Theft app,” said a statement by committee chairman Rashid Din.
Rashid had earlier announced that polling for the Julau division was suspended and a re-election would be held.
This followed allegations from Rafizi Ramli of data tampering through use of the Prey app.
But Prey Inc, which developed the software, refuted the allegations, saying the app was not capable of such actions.
The Julau PKR division was embroiled in controversy following reports that its membership had surged from 603 on June 26 to 13,000 a day later.
Two reports have been lodged with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission over the matter, as well as the alleged hacking of tablets used in the e-voting process and claims of vote-buying.
Rashid said the results from the re-elections in Tawau and Pensiangan which were held on Saturday would be released in due course, adding that there was nothing suspicious about them.
However, he said there were more digital ballot papers than ballot slips released for voting in both PKR divisions that day, which will be subject to removal from the system.
Results will be released on the PKR official voting website after this is done.
Results for Pensiangan were withheld as hundreds of voters had been unable to choose their candidates due to the short time given.
Tawau, meanwhile, went to the polls again after results in the division were disqualified last week, reportedly over trouble and disruption during the election process.
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On the matter of voters who were unable to vote as they were not registered in the system, Rashid said their concerns would be addressed only if they were part of divisions with tied results or slim majorities.