Who gains most from longer campaign period?
The 13-day campaign period, from Feb 24, nominations day, to March 8, the day before polling day, is the longest campaign period in recent memory. The 24 days between when parliament was dissolved to polling day is the longest period since the 1982 general election.
analysis The 13-day campaign period, from Feb 24, nominations day, to March 8, the day before polling day, is the longest campaign period in recent memory. The 24 days between when parliament was dissolved to polling day is the longest period since the 1982 general election.
This announcement caught many opposition leaders by surprise since the opposition feels that it is disadvantaged from a shorter campaign period because of the BN’s far superior resource base.
So what prompted the Election Commission to announce this prolonged campaign period? The boring and simple answer is ‘logistics’, though this does not mean that is it political unimportant.
The EC faced many organisational challenges in the 2004 election which resulted in some election-day hiccups, many of which were not well publicised. For example, many voters in Selangor were forced to queue up for hours because their names could not be found on the electoral roll. It was so serious in some constituencies that the closing time for polling stations in Selangor was extended by two hours, from 5pm to 7pm.
Another perhaps better known faux pas was the mistakes made in the printing of the party symbol in the ballot papers in Sungai Lembing, a state seat in Pahang which resulted in the postponement of the election for that state seat.
By having a longer campaign period, the EC hopes to have more time to prepare for these logistical contingencies.
But most importantly, the longer campaign period will allow the EC more time to distribute and then collect postal ballots, many of which were unreturned in 2004. It was reported that as many as 67,000 postal ballots at the parliamentary and state level were unreturned in the 2004 general elections.
Postal ballots key in 15 seats
These unreturned postal ballots were mostly concentrated in approximately 15 seats including almost 5,500 postal ballots in the parliamentary seat of Lumut.
The reason why there were so many unreturned postal ballots in 2004 was not only because of a short campaign period of about eight days but also because the EC introduced a new law which allowed for candidates to withdraw within three days after being nominated.
This means that the printing of ballots might only occur three days after nominations which does not leave much time for these ballots to be sent to the postal balloting locations and to collect them back in time to be counted.
While postal ballots comprise less than 2% of total ballots and may not have been important in 2004 because of the large majorities obtained by the BN, their concentration in what many expect to be closely contested seats makes them significant in 2008.
There were 20 seats in 2004 which had at least 2,000 postal votes and these postal votes could be important in determining the outcome of some of these seats including Pokok Sena, Ketereh, Jeli, Lumut, Bukit Bintang, Bandar Tun Razak, Teluk Kemang and Kluang.
Given that postal ballots are heavily skewed towards the BN (between 80% and 90% of postal ballots are for the BN), the outcome of being able to distribute and collect back postal ballots will likely be to the benefit of the BN candidates.
Hence, while the move to have a longer campaign period should be welcomed by all because it will give political parties and candidates more time to discuss election related issues and because it will give the EC more time to prepare for logistic contingencies, one can’t help but to wonder if ensuring postal ballots would be more effectively collected might have something to do with this decision.
ONG KIAN MING is a PhD candidate in political science at Duke University specialising in electoral and ethnic politics.
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