PUTRAJAYA: PKR’s secretary-general Datuk Saifuddin Nasution Ismail firmly said that the party will not go back to the manual system despite several technical glitches which occurred in the party’s e-voting system recently.
Saifuddin said in fact, the PKR polls in other states which included Pahang, Terengganu and Johor which used the e-voting system went on smoothly.
“We will not go back to the manual system, not at all. Only several states like Kedah and Penang had problems. And the problems in Selangor wasn’t because of technical problems but disciplinary problems,” he told reporters here today after announcing the price control scheme for Deepavali earlier.
He said there isn’t any problem with the system but the party however will work towards strengthening the current system.
“We have our information technology and programming department who is working on further enhancing and strengthening system,” he added.
Commenting further on the technical glitch during the Melaka and Negeri Sembilan party polls, Saifuddin said it was due to the ‘click button’ which did not count the votes.
“The party’s Central Election Committee has found out that glitch was due to the click button which failed to send out votes, causing votes not being counted."
It was reported that close to 2,000 votes had vanished from the party’s e-balloting system.
The report also said that the missing votes account for 60 per cent of the total ballots cast last Saturday.
He said as of now, the party has not decided to call for a re-election but however will find ways to rectify the current problem.
“The committee and our IT department are working closely to find a solution and a follow-up action. However, there are no talks as of now for a re-election,” he added.
On July, PKR chairman Larry Sng’s said in a statement that he was taken aback over the sudden increase of members in the branch from only 603 on June 26 to 13,000 a day later.
Saifuddin said that certain branches saw a spike of new members and this is also happening at the national level which have also drastically seen an increased in membership since May 9, this year.
“We had only 550,000 members since April 1999. However, the number increased to 843,271 between May 9 to June 26. This is an increase of about 300,000 in just a month and a half,” he added.