KUALA LUMPUR, July 5 — The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih) today criticised the Election Commission over the campaign period for six state elections on August 12, saying this could put some postal votes at risk.

The electoral watchdog’s steering committee the two-week campaign period would put undue pressure on on postal voters to ensure their ballots arrived back in time to be counted.

"Since the 14th general election (GE14), we have received numerous reports from overseas voters that by the time they received their postal ballots, it was either very close to Polling Day or passed it. Campaign periods should be a minimum of 21 days.

"If the EC is unwilling to extend the campaign period, then we call on them to reform the postal voting system completely.

"They should allow postal voters to download their ballots and other documents in PDF format to eliminate the need for EC to post or courier the ballots to them. This would also eliminate clerical errors commonly found with the current process of manually writing out serial numbers and stuffing envelopes. It would also be a huge cost saving for the EC,” it said in a statement.

Separately, Global Bersih expressed disappointment over the same matter, and urged the EC to guarantee that postal voters would be able to exercise their ballots effectively.

"Global Bersih is also very disappointed that non-Malaysians are still not allowed to act as witnesses on postal ballot documents. The current requirement that a Malaysian citizen must sign and witness postal ballot documents has proven to be a stumbling block for many overseas Malaysians who live in areas with few or no other Malaysians. Allowing non-Malaysians to be witnesses will enable more overseas Malaysians to participate in voting,” said its secretary-general, Nirmala Devi Windgatter, in a statement today.

Global Bersih also demanded the EC mail out ballots to postal voters immediately after nomination day using the fastest possible method to prevent delays.

"Work with Pos Malaysia to ensure that tracking numbers are provided to overseas voters through contact details used for registration to allow overseas voters to track the delivery status of their ballots.

"The duty of the Election Commission does not stop after the ballots are passed to Pos Malaysia — its duty is to oversee the whole process,” she said.

It also demanded the EC publish all returning officers’ addresses on its website to enable overseas Malaysians to ensure they have the correct details, saying there had been discrepancies in the two previous general elections.