SPR Becoming Less Transparent

SPR has stopped publishing supplementary electoral roll (quarterly changes) for 2008Q2 in PDF format on its Web site. This will block NGOs from checking large army and police movements, and SPR effectiveness in deleting dead voters

Earlier in 2007Q4 and 2008Q1, SPR had published the supplementary electoral rolls (the quarterly changes of voter addition, deletion, etc) in PDF formats. These PDF files would be put online at http://www.spr.gov.my/index/pamer_rang.htm a few weeks after the end of the quarters.

For whatever reason, however, they are no longer published online when the time comes, such as now. Now, you can only check voter changes one by one at http://daftarj.spr.gov.my/rang/rang.aspx or at one of the post offices listed here: http://www.spr.gov.my/index/pameran.html, manually using hard copies.

Both of these approaches are laborious and will not yield overall picture of changes.

This is an unfortunate change towards non-transparency, because NGOs and Opposition parties can no longer do these:

• Tally and check the overall deletion of dead voters during the quarter,
• Check for large army and police movements within the quarter,
• Append quarterly changes to the last gazetted roll to project a "pro-forma" latest roll

Note: SPR Web site had earlier de-linked the Web page that lists post offices where you can manually verify voter changes. But the link is back on now. It's at http://www.spr.gov.my/index/pameran.html.

Background:

• What happens to the electoral roll every quarter?
• Large Army and Police "Movements" Just Before GE2008
• Dead Voters Society Membership Reduced
• Army/Police Movements - Where To and From

Read more! Full post may contain more data and tables.

Data Sharing and Privacy Protection

I'm glad to share data, but I also need to protect voters' privacy

One of the first issues with publishing voter list analysis is the protection of privacy of the voters. On one hand, we need to publish enough details for you to check/duplicate my observations. On the other hand, we need to minimize exposing too much voter data unnecessarily.

In the data tables for this blog, I will include just enough data for you to be able to check on SPR's verification Website, or for you to check if you have a hardcopy/PDF/MsAcces copy of SPR file. Most of the time, you will be able to check through:

1. New or old IC, to be checked on SPR Website, or

2. A full locality code, eg, 0010203004, a NoSiri, and a SPR-publication date, which will be adequate for checking through the hardcopy/PDF/MsAccess data files published by SPR.

SPR verification Web URL keeps changing. Older gazetted database will also be replaced with newer gazetted versions. It currently shows the voters list gazetted on 2008 Feb 5.

You can try one of these SPR URLs:
http://daftarj.spr.gov.my/daftarj/
http://daftarj.spr.gov.my/daftarbi.aspx
http://daftarj.spr.gov.my/daftarbi.asp
http://www.spr.gov.my/index/pagemulahtml.htm (left column)

Asking me for detailed data

If you represent SPR, an election-monitoring NGO, political party, academician, or journalist with proper editorial control, you can leave a comment to request the data. But I may need some introduction or endorsement from other reputable sources before I give out too much voter details.

You can also request that I check certain interesting pattern on the database, then write about it for this blog.

We also have the quarterly supplementary voter changes published by SPR in PDF format for 2007q4 and 2008q1 that you can check with.
Read more! Full post may contain more data and tables.