Speed up Undi 18, automatic voter registration, says minister

Communications and Multimedia Minister Saifuddin Abdullah today called for the lowering of voting age and implementation of automatic voter registration to be expedited given that both matters have been approved in the Dewan Rakyat.

“The definitions of youth, maturity and the like are subjective. (For a person) to make a national policy, he must first reach the accepted age (of maturity). This is what happened in #Undi18. The age of 18 has been accepted as mature enough,” he said in a post on Twitter.

The voting age for Malaysians was lowered from 21 to 18 after the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2019 was passed by the Dewan Rakyat on July 16, 2019, and by the Senate on July 25 the same year.

Yesterday, the Election Commission in a statement said that Undi 18 and automatic voter registration could only be implemented after Sept 1 next year due to various constraints and issues.