回复民青团总秘书刘华才博士关于电子投票的言论; Reply to Press Statement by Dr Dominic Lau, Secretary-General of Gerakan National Youth

UPM campus election have finished its nomination on 22/1/2010, and today will be the nomination for UM and UKM..

Before talking about e-undi, let me share some of the incident happen in UPM in the past few days. HEP has disqualified some of the candidates (mainly from pro-m or opposition faction in HEP’s point of view) due to a few reason:
- Photo submitted is not following the format/not clear enough
- Does not submit the original “wang cagaran” receipt.

Now something we need to clarify is, in the booklet “tatacara Pemilihan” they only state there you need to submit password size photo and that’s the end. Whereas for the receipt, after you pay money you need to log in with the receipt no., fill in e-registration form online, print out a copy and submit during the nomination day. Those reason of disqualify is totally unacceptable. Luckily the board of appeal comprises of dean review appeal from those disqualified students, if not this will definitely the biggest joke ever seen in campus election.

You can actually figure out the mindset of those officer and authority of university from this incident.

Can u imagine the e-undi system which is introduced and controlled by such people? I would rather use the word “manipulate” to describe the way they handle the situation.

Talking about e-undi system, I guess no one will have more bitter experience than the student in UPM. UPM is the first core university which introduce e-undi into campus election. Let me share some jokes that happen a few years ago to enable all of us to actually figure out the scenario in e-undi system:

- 2005/2006 campus election. DVC (students affairs and alumni) call up my seniors (chief coordinator at that time) around 1pm, which the voting has elapsed around 4hr , saying this “ panggil budak budak you undi semua calon aspirasi, jangan undi calon cina sahaja”, I really wonder how can our DVC know the voting trend of Chinese way before the vote is counted and sum from each voting zone.

- I remember one of the independent candidate which compete in “faculty” seat, get only one vote after the E-vote counting. that’s weird! Candidate + his nominee and seconder will have 3 votes already! And after so call recounting (frankly I don’t have idea at all how e-voting can be recount) he gets 81 votes! That’s ridiculous

I would like to take this opportunity to illustrate how e-voting counting is actually been done in UPM campus election

- 2005/2006 – all the main CPU from each voting zone is collected and escort to main vote counting centre, each CPU is connected to the server, and the system runs and compile the voting results. (still can see no. of vote each candidate get in each zone)

- 2006/2007 – all the main CPU from each voting zone is collected and escort to main vote counting centre, pendrive is plugged in to each CPU and data is copied, after that transfer to main server using pendrive, and the system runs and compile the voting results. (still can see no. of vote each candidate get in each zone)

- 2007/2008 – all the above job is simplified as main computer at each zone is connected to the main server at main vote counting centre. Vote counting is as simple as clicking a few button. Candidate can only see how much vote they get without knowing the breakdown.

I would not comment on those scenario, but I leave it to you all. As far as transparent and democratic election is carried out, a few conditions of voting as below need to exist

- Students are free to vote secretly without any threat from any party

- Vote is re-traceable for re-counting purpose

- Students are provided the option to vote any candidate, but at the same time they should have the freedom to make a spoil vote （废票）if they feel none of the candidate actually full fill their requirement.

- Transparent, accountable vote counting.

And clearly e-undi will never provide such a conditions. It violates the democracy and transparency as long as the accountability of the election, making it meaningless