Voters lodge police report after being denied right to vote

PONTIAN: Two Malay women and a Chinese man lodged police reports separately today claiming they were denied the rights to vote in the Tanjung Piai parliamentary by-election.

The three complainant — Habibah Abdul Gafor, Rihanah Soha and You Teong King — lodged their reports at the Permas Police Station in Kukup around 12.30pm.

Both Habibah and Rihanah claimed that when they arrived at the Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Boh around 10.30am to perform their voting duties, Election Commission (EC) staff there informed them that their names were marked as having voted earlier, despite that not being the case.

”We demand our rights to cast our votes. Our fingers were not marked (with ink), proving that we had yet to vote,” Habibah told reporters after lodging her report, here.

You (Teong King) also claimed that he faced a similar issue when he went to Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Sri Kukup at around 11am to vote.

Meanwhile, EC announced that 64% of Tanjung Piai voters had exercised their electoral duty as of 3pm today.

The commission had previously said it expects to see a 70% turnout out of the total 52,471 ordinary voters that were registered in the parliamentary seat in Southern Johor.

Voting process ends at 5.30pm today.

The result of today’s six-cornered contest — involving Pakatan Harapan’s Karmaine Sardini, Barisan Nasional’s Dr Wee Jeck Seng, Wendy Subramaniam of Gerakan, Dr Badhrulhisham Abdul Aziz from Berjasa and two independent candidates Dr Ang Chuan Lock and Faridah Aryani Abd Ghaffar — is expected to be announced later tonight.