Bersih chairman Maria Chin Abdullah said today that the EC had “silently” made these civil servants eligible for postal voting since October and December last year.
“How did EC come up with this decision to gazette more government servants to be postal voters?
“It seems that they have done it unilaterally to help certain political parties win the election,” she told a news conference.
Maria said Bersih 2.0 was always against postal voting as it lacked transparency.
“We do not know the process of counting postal votes as there is a lot of secrecy.”
However, she said, those gazetted as postal voters did not automatically change their voter status from “normal” to “postal”.
“Election regulations require people who want to be postal voters to register with the EC which will decide if they are eligible.”
According to federal gazette notifications dated Oct 23 and Dec 13, 2017, EC secretary Abdul Ghani Salleh designated the staff of nine departments as postal voters under the Elections (Postal Voting) Regulations.
The departments are prisons, fire and rescue, maritime enforcement, civil defence, police volunteer reserve, immigration, national registration as well as health workers and those under the National Disaster Management Agency.
Asked on her biggest concern in this year’s general election, Maria said she was worried the results might be “fixed” through the current redelineation exercise.
“It will be the most challenging one because the results will be partially fixed,” she said.