PETALING JAYA: The Johor election is set to be the first to have voters aged 18 to 20 following the successful implementation of Undi18, says Election Commission (EC) deputy chairman Dr Azmi Sharom.

       About 6% of the 2.5 million Johor voters will be from the “Undi18 segment”.

       Azmi said the latest electoral roll, which was gazetted on Jan 14, includes voters who turned 18 as at Dec 31 last year.

       “As the Johor state assembly was dissolved after the Jan 14 electoral roll was gazetted, those who are 18 and above as at Dec 31 will be eligible for this state election,” he said in an interview yesterday.

       The Johor state assembly was dissolved on Jan 22, paving the way for a state election to be held within 60 days.

       Based on the EC’s Jan 14 electoral roll, a total of 5,718,760 Malaysians aged 18 and above as at Dec 31, 2021, have been automatically registered as new voters.

       While the electoral roll is under a six-month review period which ends on July 13, Azmi said the newly-registered voters would still be eligible to vote.

       There will be about 2.5 million voters who will be eligible to vote in the Johor election, an increase from 1.8 million who were registered for the 2018 general election.

       With the implementation of automatic voter registration, there are 750,000 new voters in Johor, which is about 30% of the total.

       And of these 750,000 automatically registered voters, about 175,000 are those aged 18 to 20.

       The campaign to reduce the voting age, better known as Undi18, was a student-led movement that started in 2016.

       A Bill was tabled in Parliament in 2019 and received unanimous support from both sides of the divide.

       In December last year, Undi18 and automatic voter registration were gazetted by the government.

       The Johor polls will also be the first one where 18-year-olds can stand as election candidates.

       This is after the Johor state assembly amended its constitution on Jan 6 to lower the minimum age of election candidates for state seats from 21 to 18.

       So far, all states except Melaka have lowered the minimum age for election candidacy.