I Feel A Fever Coming

Some of you out there may be aware that it's almost election time in this country. There's speculation, of course, on everything, ranging from when parliament will be dissolved to who is contesting which seats.

And when you see a storm coming, the smart ones out there prepare for it, so I give you my list of things to do before the election breaks:

• Register to Vote Here's a surprise: As of this moment, 1.7 million people have not yet registered, with 450,000 in the Klang Valley alone.
  
  • How do you check if you have been registered? Well, you can use the Internet or SMS. I do have some words to say about an Internet system that doesn't seem to be up and an alternative SMS system that charges RM1 per search. Also, the fact that by entering an IC number, you can get hold of somebody's name. But these things belong in another article.
    
  • If you find that you have not registered, all is not lost, as the current registration ends on 31 March. This is of no use if elections are held before 31 March 2004, and the Election Commision themselves will only be ready to hold them in March, but if they are held later and you didn't register when you were given a final chance then I hope your apathy bites you in the butt and you be banned from all teh tarik political discussions for the next four years. Incidentally, the excellent jeffooi.com reports that the average turnout is about 70%.
    
  
• Know who you're voting for Once you know which districts you're registered for, it's time to learn more about the candidates. Of course, technically you won't know until they are announced, but you can find out who your current main man is.
  
  • In theory, you can get all from the Parliament website, including who the Dewan Rakyat are, but for some reason when you try to browse them by district, you get a "Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource" error.
    
  • All is not lost. There is a webpage that contains all members of the Dewan Rakyat as of 2000. From there you can get the name and browse in the Parliament website.
    
  • For example, my area is Segambut and my fella is Dr. Tan Kee Kwong (BN). He even has a website of his own, although officially it isn't - it's meant to be for all of Segambut.
    
  • Check out how he did in the last elections. My man won by a majority of 8586 in a constituency of 60,110 from a turnout of 41,266. Close-ish, but not that close.
    

I'll be posting more stuff as they come along. Until then, Happy Electioning!