“It is not possible for there to be one million postal voters,” said commission chairman Mohd Hashim Abdullah.
“The postal voters mainly comprise civil servants, including security forces personnel, who are unable to vote on the polling date. There are 1.6 million civil servants, so how is it possible that as many as one million of them would want to go for postal votes?” he said.
Hashim, speaking at a press conference today, said nearly 5,000 Malaysians overseas have applied for postal votes.
The deadline for overseas postal voters expires at midnight tonight.
“The five countries with the most number of requests were the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Taiwan and China,” he said.
The current total was 4,916 applications, but the total number of postal voters was still being tabulated, as the deadline for accepting domestic postal vote applications is the day of nomination.
The Election Commission has yet to set the dates for nomination of candidates and for polling pending receipt of official notification from the Speakers of the 12 state assemblies of the dissolution of their legislatures.
Parliament stands dissolved from today, while eight states have confirmed that consent had been received from the rulers for dissolution.