PKR central election committee (JPP) chairman Rashid Din, who made the announcement during a session to present the divisions’ e-voting process yesterday, also dismissed claims by some who appeared to be accusing the committee of hiding or manipulating data.

He said five IT experts, comprising a representative of PKR’s top leadership, experts from Institut Darul Ehsan and abroad as well as independent experts, had unanimously confirmed the matter.

“The weak internet access has been acknowledged by the experts. It caused unreadable voting data which could not be sent to cloud storage. That’s why the online votes were ‘lost’,” he said, adding that the findings would be tabled in a meeting to determine the next course of action.

“To be fair (to voters), the first idea is for us to hold a re-election before the PKR congress on Nov 16. Whether in full or in part, we will decide soon after the meeting,” he told reporters.

He said to avoid a repeat of the issue, the JPP would create a direct duplicate storage of ballot data stored via cloud and in the computer tablet itself, while the voting process would be made online and offline.

He acknowledged that there had been some technical problems in the polling process but said the committee remained confident that the e-voting system was the best.

“There were some attempts to hack the e-voting system during the election in Melaka, but from any aspect, the system is believed to be safe as we also use our own hackers to prevent other hacker activities.

“We will discuss all aspects, including internet access, hackers and staff who try to sabotage the votes. We will continue to improve the system,” he added.

Earlier reports said there were “missing” votes in six divisions in Melaka involving 1,700 voters and one division in Negeri Sembilan involving 300 voters.

This led to the deferment of full results in both states.