SEREMBAN, Aug 1 — Election Commission (EC) chairman Datuk Seri Ramlan Harun today visited three polling centres in Seremban to monitor the voting process and ensure the 16th Negeri Sembilan State Election is proceeding smoothly and in an orderly manner.
He began his inspection at Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Paroi Jaya, which serves the Sikamat state constituency, at about 9.30 am.
Ramlan then visited Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Agama Sheikh Haji Mohd Said, also in the Sikamat constituency, before concluding his tour at Sekolah Menengah Agama (SMA) Dato’ Klana Petra Maamor, which serves the Ampangan state constituency.
During the visits, he received briefings from election officials on the voting process and inspected the facilities provided for voters and election personnel.
He is also scheduled to observe the pilot implementation of the Voter Attendance Optical Character Recognition (OCR-VA) system at polling streams 1 to 7 at the SMA Dato’ Klana Petra Maamor polling centre.
The OCR-VA system was developed to record and verify voter attendance by automatically scanning information from voters’ identity cards, with the aim of improving the efficiency of election management.
As of 10 am, voter turnout stood at 18.22 per cent.
The EC is targeting an overall voter turnout of between 72 and 75 per cent. Preliminary results are expected as early as 10 pm, with the full results anticipated before midnight.
A total of 859,760 registered voters, including 7,391 postal voters, are eligible to vote today to elect representatives for the state’s 36 legislative assembly seats, with 103 candidates contesting.
Early voting, held on July 28, recorded a turnout of 91.06 per cent, or 14,995 voters, surpassing the EC’s target of 90 per cent.
For the latest updates on the 16th Negeri Sembilan state election, visit https://prn.bernama.com/n9. — Bernama
