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THE Election Commission (EC) will use its Optical Character Recognition Voter Attendance (OCR-VA) system in the Melaka state election to provide real-time voter turnout figures, replacing the previous practice of updating attendance data hourly.
EC Deputy chairman Dr Azmi Sharom said the system was designed solely to record voter attendance and would neither interfere with ballot secrecy nor prolong the time taken by voters to cast their ballots.
He said the EC was confident the technology would improve the efficiency of election monitoring, although polling officials would need time to familiarise themselves with its operation.
“So far, we see this as a system that election officials need to get used to, but it is not particularly difficult. As far as we know, they have also not found it confusing or complicated. The system is relatively simple and accurate.
“We will continue using it. This is one of the efforts to further modernise our voting system, and I believe it has no impact whatsoever on the secrecy of our ballots,” he said.
He was speaking to reporters after inspecting ballot box checks for the 16th Melaka State Election at the Merlimau Polytechnic today.
Azmi said the EC hoped the public and all stakeholders would support the implementation as part of efforts to modernise the electoral process.
He also advised voters to check their polling stations and voting streams through the MySPR Semak application before heading to polling centres tomorrow to avoid going to the wrong location.
Those without Internet access can arrive early and verify their details at EC counters set up outside polling centres. - November 13, 2026
