She said Azhar’s plans to address the flaws in the recent redelineation exercise was a welcome step towards rectifying the problem of malapportionment.

However, she said there were many other problems in the electoral system which needed urgent attention, including the process of cleaning up the electoral roll.

“The many inconsistencies in the electoral roll are well documented. These include voters with the same name, same date of birth, same address and almost identical IC numbers.

“Many voters are registered to one address and there are voters that appear as both an ordinary voter and a postal voter in the electoral roll.”

In a statement, she also urged the EC to support the call to repeal Section 9A of the Elections Act to allow changes to the electoral roll in court and to make illegal alterations of the roll an election offence.

The Petaling Jaya MP said the EC should also study the need for automatic voter registration, adding that this should not be difficult as the National Registration Department already possessed all the necessary information.

She said this was especially pertinent in light of the government’s efforts to lower the voting age to 18.

“If the government succeeds, there will be millions more eligible citizens who have yet to register to vote by the 15th general election,” she said.

Another suggestion was for the EC to consider reviewing the early voting process.

Maria said early voting should be limited to military and police personnel, and on-duty civilians including EC officers and media personnel with election-related duties on polling day.

She also urged the EC to consider allowing those who are registered to vote in Sabah, Sarawak or Peninsular Malaysia but who are in a different region on polling day to be included as early voters.

Adding that postal voting had been a “major failure” in the May 9 general election, she said the entire system should be abolished.

“Overseas voters should be granted access to early voting at already established polling stations. This would mean that voters overseas do not have to worry about not receiving their ballot papers on time.”

She also supported Bersih’s call for a change in composition of EC members, saying the principle of one person, one vote can only be upheld with a team committed to clean and fair elections.