MUAR, Nov 17 — With postal voting available to Malaysians living in Singapore for the first time for a Malaysian General Election (GE), a group of volunteers in Singapore are helping Malaysians living and working there exercise their civic duty of voting.

The 1ThirdMedia Movement, which is a non-governmental organisation and backed by Malaysian youth democracy movement Undi18, has stationed more than 20 volunteers around Singapore since last Friday (Nov 11) to collect thousands of postal voting slips.

On Thursday, all these votes will be collated and transported back to Malaysia where they have to be presented to the main sorting centre in Kuala Lumpur, before they are sent to the respective returning offices all over Malaysia by 5pm on polling day, Nov 19.

Volunteer Calvin Ong, 35, said that as of Wednesday 8,500 votes had been collected and expects the final tally to be closer to 10,000.

Malaysians living in Singapore are allowed for the first time to cast their ballots through post for a General Election. Before the change in rules, postal voting was only allowed for countries that did not share land borders with Malaysia, but it has since been extended to eligible Malaysians living in Thailand, Brunei and Kalimantan in Indonesia.

The rule change was made ahead of the Melaka State Election last year.

Malaysians who opted for postal voting had their ballots mailed directly to them and may send them back to Malaysia through a courier or through initiatives such as the one conducted by 1ThirdMedia Movement.

Mr Ong, who is a project manager at a technology company in Singapore, said that some voters are opting for their free service because they are concerned that if they use courier services their ballots may not reach the returning offices in time or that their vote is tampered with en route.

"What we are is an alternative platform for those who got their votes super late,” said Mr Ong. "We will make sure that every vote that we collect is returned to the returning office on time, safely, and make sure that they are not read.”

Malaysian Rachel Lau, 27, who works as an accountant in Singapore opted for the service because she received her ballot paper on Monday — just 5 days before polling day.

She said she had originally considered travelling back to her hometown in Ipoh, Perak to vote, but decided against it in the end as it was too expensive to fly during election weekend.

She said postal voting was her next best choice but was concerned that she would not be able to send the vote back on time through a courier service so she sought the help of the 1ThirdMedia Movement.

She met a volunteer at a McDonald's outlet in Clementi Mall on Tuesday evening and saw a crowd of about 10 to 15 people there submitting their votes as well. The entire process took a matter of minutes and was free, she said.

Another Malaysian voter living in Singapore, 23-year-old Chuah Loo Yee, said that she received her postal ballot in the mail on Friday and had sent it back to Malaysia via an express courier service. She only found out about the initiative after she had spent S$33 to send her vote back.

Ms Chuah, who works in the food and beverage sector, said that she had opted for postal voting as it was too time consuming to take the five-hour bus ride from Singapore back to her hometown in Kota Raja, Selangor.

On how she felt spending the equivalent of RM110 to cast a single vote, she said: "It’s still worth it, because it’s our duty to vote... if everyone overseas thinks that it’s too troublesome and that they shouldn’t vote, then the power of the vote will diminish and it won’t help Malaysia.”

Other voters split on whether to return

While postal voting has presented a unique opportunity for Malaysians to cast their votes remotely, other Malaysians living in Singapore who did not choose this option were split on whether to return to Malaysia to vote.

Of the six Malaysians living in Singapore that TODAY spoke to that will not be post voting, three said that they were either undecided or not returning, while another three said that they would be returning to vote.

A sales executive at a yoga studio, who only wanted to be known as Ms. Luckneswary, said that she plans to take two to three days of annual leave to make the trip back to her constituency in Selangor to vote.

She said that she is excited to vote, as the competition between parties is more heated than ever.

"It's my right and I want to go vote for the party which deserve(s my vote),” said the 28-year-old.

Agreeing, 29-year-old Fan Kar Jon, who works in Singapore as a public policy manager in a consultancy, said that he will be taking Friday off to travel back to Johor Bahru to vote.

"It is a civic duty and every vote will help to signal what Malaysians want for the future of the country — the chance does not come around often,” he said.

Others were still undecided and would decide based on external factors on polling day.

Mr Jerry Ng, who works as a sales assistant at a mobile phone repair shop, said that his decision to return to vote will be dependent on whether the Causeway is jammed on polling day and whether he is able to secure a bus ticket back to Johor Bahru.

"If I can buy a bus ticket then I’ll go back, if not, then nevermind,” said the 27-year-old.

Malaysians living overseas more divided on whether to vote than in previous elections, say experts

Experts say that compared to the previous elections where many Malaysians living overseas felt compelled to vote, the motivations to vote during these elections may have tapered off.

Dr Francis Hutchinson, senior fellow and coordinator of the Malaysia Studies Programme at Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said that it is statistically proven that when more Malaysians living overseas return to vote, there will be a swing towards the opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan (PH).

He added that in the 2018 elections, voting numbers from across the border were high, as there was a sense that it was a "fundamental election” that was important for the country.

For instance, there was the 1Malaysia Development Bhd scandal that had impacted the results of the elections then.

However, the political landscape has since changed.

"Now, while there are certain groups of voters who think still that (the elections are important), there has been so much transition between different administrations, it’s hard to pick out who has done what, and then the Sheraton Move has made voters feel disenfranchised,” he said.

The Sheraton Move was a political manoeuvre in early 2020 which saw several key members defecting from the then-incumbent PH, causing the downfall of the PH government then.

He added that factors such as the price of transport going up, as well the onmi-present fear of contracting Covid-19, could also keep undecided overseas voters away from the polls.

While there is no official figures on how many Malaysians live and work in Singapore, an article in Malaysia's The Sun in June reported that 900,000 Malaysians work in Singapore, with about 300,000 commuting daily.

Indeed, due to the political turmoil over the past two years, Mohammad Saifuldin, who works as a barber at Queensway Shopping Centre, said that he is not sure if he wants to return Johor Bahru to vote.

While he travelled home to voted in the 2018 elections, he is now unsure of which party to cast his vote for and as such is not sure if he will bother to travel home this time round.

"I also don’t know who to vote for. Now it's very hard to trust the parties,” said the 41-year-old. — TODAY