Malaysian volunteers in Singapore bring home 9,000 postal votes for GE15

Malaysian volunteers under the auspices of 1thirdmedia Movement successfully brought back about 9,000 postal votes for the 15th general election from Singapore early this morning.

They joined hands to collect the postal votes from Malaysian voters who are working and residing in the republic over a period of seven days.

1thirdmedia Movement is one of the movements working with Undi18, a Malaysian youth movement, to bring back postal votes from the island city.

They had done the same during the 15th Johor state election.

"We feel relieved at being able to complete this duty entrusted to us before voting day. We hope that these votes will reach voting centres throughout the country on time," volunteer Farrah Diyana Mohamad Ali told Bernama.

Farrah said five collection zones had been set up to cover the central, eastern, western, northern, and southern sectors of the island nation, before the ballots were combined to be taken back to Malaysia.

The boxes arrived safely at the sorting centre in Kuala Lumpur at about 2am, after the cut-off time for collection at 2pm on Nov 17 in Singapore.

"Happy, overwhelmed to be able to bring home these ballot envelopes," said another volunteer, Calvin Ong.

"It's a success for our team after a week of hard work collecting the postal votes. 

"It's very tiring but it's a worthwhile mission for the sake of the country," said Ong who hails from Taiping.

He also had a simple message to the 21 million voters in Malaysia: "Go out and vote." 

According to Undi18’s Twitter, there are a million Malaysian voters overseas. 

It had received ballots from around the world at KLIA, with the earliest arriving from China and Germany. 

Apart from the 1thirdmedia Movement, the others in the collection parade are Vote Malaysia and Global Malaysian Network.

The ballot envelopes will be taken to the sorting centre in Kuala Lumpur to be sorted for the 222 parliamentary constituencies and 117 state legislative assemblies and sent out to the states, including Sabah and Sarawak.

The deadline for postal ballot papers to be received by the managing officer at the election division is before 5pm on voting day.