My First Experience As Polling And Counting Agent

Today 8th March 2008, I've volunteer myself as the polling and counting agent for Democratic Action Party (DAP) for the Petaling Jaya Utara parliament constituency in the 12th general election.

At 7.00am, I arrived at Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Megah located at SS26 Petaling Jaya. At 7.50am, I walk-in to the polling center "8" as assigned by DAP and sit at the place reserved for polling agent.

At 8.00am, the polling is started and in the first hour, more than 80 voters turn-up and cast thier vote into ballot box.

I was replace by another volunteer at 1.10pm as I and my wife have to go to vote at the same school. Due to lack of both financial and human resources, I have to come back at 4.00pm to act as counting agent. I was told that the ruling party is paying RM200 to thier polling and counting agent for two hours of work.

At 5.00pm the polling center is close and all ballot box is sealed and witness by polling and counting agents. Later at 5.30pm, the counting start, for the past 11th general election, the counting of votes for parliament and state is seperated. The SPR will first count the state seat and than follow by the parliament seat. This understanding was achieved as all the SPR officer was aware that opposition party is lack of volunteer counting agent.

But in this 12th general election, the SPR have given less than a week notice to the opposition party that the counting of votes for both state and parliament will be perform at the same time.

Fortunately, this round the DAP have managed to ensure two counting agent is available. At 5.30pm, the counting started and the process end in about one hour.

The result is DAP have win both the state and parliament seats. The result was confirmed by SPR officer, counting agent from opposition party as well as the ruling coalition. Than, the result is recorded in the Borang 13 and signed by all three party.

The SPR officer informed us that they'll forward the result to the main center to tally for the total votes. I was told that according to the latest SPR ruling, all re-count could only be done at the polling station and no re-count could be done at main center.

I left the polling station and back to my house for dinner with my wife. Later, at 9.00pm I went to the main polling center at SS2 to meet up with DAP supporter. We was there to share our experience during the day. Lots of phone call and SMS are started to coming in.

At 10.30pm, I received an SMS which mentioned "Khairy has lost in Rembau". All of us are so happy to celebrete this news but about an hour later, we received another SMS which mentioned "after the re-count, Khairy win with majority of over 5,000 votes". Could this possible?

Perhaps only Khairy himself and those SPR officer and counting agent can answer.