KUALA LUMPUR: VoteMalaysia has so far collected close to 2,000 postal votes from overseas.

The coalition will be sorting the postal votes at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall from Thursday.

Its coordinator Diffan Sina Jasmi told Sin Chew Daily that Undi18 and several other non-governmental organizations will be at Kuala Lumpur International Airport from August 9 to 11 to coordinate the collection of postal votes.

Undi18 and youth organizations at state level will coordinate the delivery of postal votes to the states of Penang, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu this Friday.

These postal votes will be sent by flights to ensure they reach the states before the August 12 polling day.

Diffan said the Election Commission (EC) has improved the postal vote system whereby Malaysian voters in Southeast Asia received their mailed ballots on August 1, a day after the EC mailed them.

For countries outside Southeast Asia such as Qatar, New Zealand, Japan and the United Kingdom, some voters received their ballots on August 2.

By comparison, voters in countries outside Southeast Asia only received their ballot papers five days after EC mailed them before last November’s general election.

“The reason can be due to the fact that the volume is much lower now than the last general election, and that many Malaysian students studying overseas have returned home for their break.

VoteMalaysia has gathered Malaysian organizations from six countries — Singapore, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong — to collect the postal votes while volunteers from other countries joined in.

Those who have received the postal votes in advance have sufficient time to return the mail by courier.

Those wanting to save on postage can hand over their postal ballots to VoteMalaysia or other volunteers to bring them back to Malaysia.

An envelope weighing 20 g from London to Malaysia may cost between RM300 and RM400, he said.

VoteMalaysia will be releasing the total number of postal votes collected this Friday, he added.

The coalition collected more than 35,000 mails for postal votes in the 15th general election.

EC issued a total of 7,972 postal votes for the upcoming state elections. It issued 48,000 in last year’s general election.

Bersih chairman Thomas Fann has said the coalition has not received any complaint on postal votes so far.

In fact, compared to the 15th general election, he said it is relatively quiet this time probably because the voters are more familiar with the process now.