KOTA KINABALU, Nov 29 — All 882 polling centres for the 17th Sabah election closed at 5.30pm today.
These centres, which involved 3,599 streams, were closed in stages after polling began at 7.30am.
More than 1.74 million voters participated in today’s election to elect their representatives for the 73 contested seats in the Sabah State Legislative Assembly.
According to the Election Commission (EC), 60.94 per cent, or 1,062,114 voters, had cast their ballots by 4pm.
The EC expects to announce early voting results around 10pm tonight.
Meanwhile, the EC said it has started opening postal ballot envelopes at several vote-tallying centres, ahead of the 5pm deadline for receiving the envelopes today.
The process, streamed live on the EC’s Facebook page, marks the third of four key stages in postal vote management — issuance, receiving, opening, and finally, counting.
According to a spokesperson for the Elections Academy, 22,880 postal vote applications have been approved for this state election, covering categories 1A, 1B and 1C. These categories include election officials such as EC personnel, media practitioners, security forces, polling-day workers, overseas voters, and individuals from listed agencies.
The EC’s live broadcast also showed the opening process being conducted at Dewan Jati, Sabah Agriculture Department, for two state seats — N53 Sekong and N54 Karamunting.
For N53 Sekong, 286 postal votes will be processed, comprising 265 category 1A votes, five category 1B votes and 16 category 1C votes. Meanwhile, N54 Karamunting received 696 postal votes, comprising 685 category 1A votes, three category 1B votes and eight category 1C votes.
Today’s process would also be assisted by Penang returning officers, and several candidate agents were present to observe the opening of the envelopes.
