Undi18 constitutional amendment
In July 2019 Malaysia's Parliament amended the Federal Constitution to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 and to introduce automatic voter registration, but the change only took legal effect in December 2021 after a court challenge in Sarawak.
What happened
In July 2019 Malaysia's Parliament did something it rarely does: it amended the Federal Constitution with support from both sides of the chamber. The Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2019 changed Article 119, the provision that sets out who is qualified to vote, replacing "twenty-one years" with "eighteen years", and changed Article 47 and section 5 of the Eighth Schedule so that an 18-year-old could also stand for the Dewan Rakyat and for a state assembly.
The Dewan Rakyat passed it on 16 July 2019 with 211 votes, well above the 148 needed for a two-thirds majority, and with no votes against. The Dewan Negara followed on 25 July, where 47 of the 68 senators supported it and 20 were absent. The result was Act A1603.
The bipartisan outcome was a negotiated one. As Wilson Tay Tze Vern set out in his ConstitutionNet analysis, the then-opposition made its support conditional on automatic voter registration being included, so that eligible citizens would be enrolled by the Election Commission rather than having to sign up themselves. That condition was accepted, and it mattered: an earlier 2019 attempt to amend the Constitution had fallen short of two-thirds. The government separately declined to make voting compulsory, with Mahathir Mohamad pointing to turnout figures in countries that do compel it.
Passing the amendment and bringing it into force turned out to be two different things — and not for all of it equally. The two candidacy-age sections took effect on 11 September 2019. The voting-age section, section 3, needed a separate commencement date, and in March 2021 the Election Commission said the earliest it could deliver both the lower voting age and automatic registration was September 2022. EC chairman Abdul Ghani Salleh pointed to the Movement Control Order and pandemic disruption.
In court, senior federal counsel Shamsul Bolhassan added practical grounds: incomplete residential records and difficulties assigning polling locations. The five Sarawakian applicants, through their lawyer Clarice Chan, argued the opposite — that this was administrative convenience placed ahead of a constitutional right, and that 18-year-olds could register manually in the meantime. Judicial Commissioner Alexander Siew How Wai asked from the bench why the Movement Control Order became a reason for delay only in March 2021.
- 3 September 2021The Kuching High Court ruled for the five applicants and ordered implementation by the end of 2021.
- 21 September 2021Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said the Cabinet had agreed not to appeal. No appeal was filed within the 30-day window, and the order stood.
- 15 December 2021Section 3 of the 2019 Act came into operation. The Sarawak state election three days later still did not use it, because the roll for that contest had been certified on 2 November, before the assembly was dissolved.
- 19 November 2022The first federal test came at the 15th general election. The roll had grown to 21,173,638 voters; 1,393,549 of them were aged 18 to 20, and half the electorate — 50.3% — was under 40.
What those voters did with their ballots is where the evidence thins out. The Kini News Lab analysis of 7,351 polling districts found Perikatan Nasional ahead in 46% of the youngest districts against Pakatan Harapan's 38%, while stressing that its unit of analysis is the district, not the voter. Named analysts differed on what that meant. Writing and speaking in August 2023, ahead of that year's six-state elections:
- Danesh Prakash Chacko
- expected the youth vote to skew towards Perikatan Nasional.
- Jason Wee
- described it as largely undecided and changeable.
- Azmi Hassan
- read it as an appetite for something new.
- Ong Kian Ming
- warned against treating religion as the determining factor.
Those are their positions as recorded in 2023; whether any of them holds the same view now has not been checked, and no later assessment by them has been located for this page. On the evidence gathered here the KB does not adjudicate between them.
What the sources say
No official GE15 turnout rate specifically for voters aged 18 to 20 has been located; published figures combine wider age bands, so an Undi18-only turnout rate cannot be inferred.
No responsive SPR age-specific turnout publication located
The amendment itself
The Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2019 was short: three amending sections. It changed Article 119, which sets out who is qualified to vote; Article 47, which sets out who is qualified to be elected to Parliament; and section 5 of the Eighth Schedule, which sets out who is qualified to be a member of a State Legislative Assembly.
The voting-age change itself was the substitution of "eighteen years" for "twenty-one years" in Article 119(1)(a). As amended, Article 119(1) provides that "Every citizen who— (a) has attained the age of eighteen years on the qualifying date; (b) is resident in a constituency on such qualifying date or, if not so resident, is an absent voter; and (c) is, under the provisions of any law relating to elections, registered in the electoral roll as an elector in the constituency in which he resides on the qualifying date, is entitled to vote in that constituency in any election to the House of Representatives or the Legislative Assembly unless he is disqualified under Clause (3) or under any law relating to offences committed in connection with elections".
Federal Constitutionthe substitution of eighteen years for twenty-one years in Article 119(1)(a) is described in Malay Mail
The Bill also enabled automatic voter registration by the Election Commission, so that eligible citizens would no longer have to register themselves; those aged 21 and above who had not previously registered were to be enrolled automatically as well. The enabling change in the text is small: paragraph 3(b) of Act A1603 substituted the words "is registered" for "applies for registration" in Article 119(4)(b), the definition of the qualifying date, so that a person's entitlement no longer turns on their having applied.
Laws of MalaysiaAttorney General's ChambersThe StarConstitutionNet
The Bill lowered the minimum age to stand as a candidate to 18 as well, and it did so through two separate sections. Section 2 amended Article 47, in paragraph (b), so that a citizen of or over 18 is qualified to be a member of the House of Representatives; the qualifying age for the Senate, in paragraph (a), remains 30. Section 4 amended section 5 of the Eighth Schedule — the schedule of provisions to be inserted in State Constitutions under Article 71 — so that the equivalent age for membership of a State Legislative Assembly is 18. Both sections came into force on 11 September 2019, more than two years before the voting-age change.
Laws of MalaysiaAttorney General's ChambersLibrary of Congress Global Legal Monitor
The Eighth Schedule is a template, not a direct amendment of any state's own constitution: Article 71 describes it as the provisions to be inserted in State Constitutions, and Article 71(4) lets Parliament legislate for a state only where that state's constitution does not contain those essential provisions or is inconsistent with them. Whether and when each state amended its own constitution to match is not covered by Act A1603.
The parliamentary passage
The Dewan Rakyat passed the Bill on 16 July 2019 with 211 votes in favour, against a two-thirds threshold of 148 of the 222 seats; the government tabled it under Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and around 59 members spoke in a roughly four-hour debate.
No member voted against the Bill in the Dewan Rakyat; both government and opposition benches supported it, and it cleared the upper house ten days later with no recorded vote against.
The Dewan Negara passed the Bill on 25 July 2019. The amendment drew the support of 47 of the 68 senators, more than the two-thirds required; 24 senators took part in the debate. Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Liew Vui Keong, who tabled the Bill, told reporters afterwards that he regretted that 20 senators had been absent during the vote. The report does not record any senator voting against, and does not account for how the rest of the House was recorded.
The Bill became Act A1603, the Constitution (Amendment) Act 2019.
Automatic voter registration was added to the Bill as the condition on which the then-opposition (Barisan Nasional and PAS) agreed to support it; the government had failed to secure a two-thirds majority for an earlier 2019 constitutional amendment on the status of Sabah and Sarawak.
The government declined to make voting compulsory; Mahathir argued that countries with compulsory voting still fall short of full turnout, citing Singapore at 93.56%, Australia at 91.89%, Belgium at 88.3% and Austria at 80%.
Delay, litigation and commencement
1 September 2022
Passage did not bring the change into force: the relevant section of the Act required a separate commencement date, and in March 2021 the Election Commission announced that the earliest it could implement both the lower voting age and automatic voter registration was 1 September 2022. EC chairman Datuk Abdul Ghani Salleh said the nationwide Movement Control Order imposed against Covid-19 had affected the commission's plans and preparations.
Five Sarawakians aged 18 to 20 — Ivan Alexander Ong, Sharifah Maheerah Syed Haizir, Chang Swee Ern, Viviyen Desi Geoge and Tiffany Wee Ke Ying — brought judicial review proceedings in the Kuching High Court to compel implementation.
3 September 2021
On 3 September 2021 the Kuching High Court, before Judicial Commissioner Alexander Siew How Wai, ruled for the applicants. He held that the government and the Election Commission had acted illegally and irrationally, and had failed to act with all convenient speed, in deferring implementation past September 2022. He granted two orders: certiorari, quashing that deferral decision, and mandamus, requiring all necessary steps to be taken for section 3 to come into operation as soon as possible and by 31 December 2021.
21 September 2021
On 21 September 2021 Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Parliament and Law) Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said the Cabinet had agreed not to appeal the High Court decision and that implementation would proceed by the court-ordered deadline of 31 December 2021. The government did not appeal within the 30-day period, so the order stood.
15 December 2021
Section 3 of the Constitution (Amendment) Act 2019, the section amending Article 119, came into operation on 15 December 2021, under a notification appointing that date signed by the Chief Secretary to the Government, Mohd Zuki Ali, on 25 November 2021.
18 December 2021
The Sarawak state election held on 18 December 2021 did not use the lowered voting age or automatic voter registration, because the electoral roll used had been certified as of 2 November 2021, before the state assembly was dissolved on 3 November.
Effect on the electorate
The GE15 electoral roll contained 21,173,638 voters, of whom 1,393,549 (6.5%) were aged 18 to 20, and Malaysians aged 18 to 39 made up 50.3% of the roll.
Where accounts differ
Why implementation slipped from mid-2021 to September 2022 is disputed. The Election Commission, through chairman Datuk Abdul Ghani Salleh, attributed the delay to the Movement Control Order and pandemic constraints on its preparations.
In court, senior federal counsel Shamsul Bolhassan argued the obstacles were practical: incomplete residential records for millions of prospective voters and difficulty assigning polling locations, and he suggested Parliament could amend the law to allow the voting-age change to proceed separately from automatic voter registration.
The applicants' lawyer Clarice Chan argued the government had acted in bad faith by putting administrative convenience ahead of a constitutional right, and that 18-year-olds could register manually while automatic registration was built.
Judicial Commissioner Alexander Siew How Wai questioned the timing of the government's explanation from the bench, asking what had happened between March 2020 and March 2021 to make the Movement Control Order a reason for delay when officials had continued to say implementation was on track.
How the new young voters behaved at GE15 is contested and rests on inference. The Kini News Lab team, coordinated by Aidila Razak and Ooi Choon Nam, analysed 7,351 polling districts and reported that Perikatan Nasional led in 46% of districts with the youngest voters against Pakatan Harapan's 38%; the same analysis states its unit is the polling district, not the individual voter.
Analyst Bridget Welsh is reported to have found Perikatan Nasional on 37% and Pakatan Harapan on 35% among voters aged 18 to 30, with Harapan leading on 44% among those aged 61 and above; she is also reported as putting turnout among 18-to-30-year-olds at 75.6%. A pre-election Merdeka Center survey is reported to have found the same 37%/35%/23% split for Perikatan Nasional, Pakatan Harapan and Barisan Nasional among youth.
Named analysts read the same numbers differently. All of the readings below were published in August 2023, on the eve of the six-state elections of 12 August 2023, and none has been re-checked against anything these individuals have said since. Speaking to Bernama on 11 August 2023, Danesh Prakash Chacko of TINDAK Malaysia was reported as believing most youth votes would skew towards Perikatan Nasional; Jason Wee of Architects of Diversity said later studies had shown youth voters to be largely undecided and able to change; and geostrategist Azmi Hassan said there was a possibility young voters chose Perikatan Nasional because it was new and they wanted to try something new. In the Kini News Lab piece of the same month, Ong Kian Ming, an academic and former DAP MP, cautioned against over-reading the "green wave" account: he wrote that tahfiz schools account for about 1% of six million primary and secondary enrolments, that the "green wave" framing ignores the diversity of Malay voters and Bersatu's 2018 gains, and that "religion is an important but not determinative voting issue".
Common questions
What did Undi18 actually change?
Undi18 lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 and enabled automatic voter registration for eligible citizens. The constitutional amendment replaced “twenty-one years” with “eighteen years” in Article 119, and changed the qualifying-date provision so entitlement no longer depended on a person applying to register.
Do I need to register myself to vote when I turn 18?
No. The amendment enabled the Election Commission to register eligible citizens automatically, rather than requiring them to register themselves; it was also intended to enrol people aged 21 and above who had not previously registered. The legal change substituted “is registered” for “applies for registration” in Article 119(4)(b).
Can I stand as an MP or ADUN at 18?
Yes. The 2019 amendment lowered the qualifying age for membership of the Dewan Rakyat and a State Legislative Assembly to 18, with those two candidacy-age sections taking effect on 11 September 2019. The Senate qualifying age in Article 47(a) remained 30.
When did 18-year-olds get the right to vote?
The voting-age change and automatic voter registration came into operation on 15 December 2021. Parliament had passed the amendment in 2019, but section 3, which amended Article 119, required a separate commencement date; the notification appointing 15 December was signed on 25 November 2021.
Why was Undi18 delayed after Parliament passed it?
The Election Commission said the Movement Control Order and pandemic constraints had delayed preparations, while the government argued in court that incomplete residential records and assigning polling locations were practical obstacles. The five applicants’ lawyer said 18-year-olds could register manually while automatic registration was prepared. The Kuching High Court then ordered the government and Election Commission to take the necessary steps for section 3 to operate by 31 December 2021.
Did Undi18 apply to the 2021 Sarawak election?
No. Although the voting-age change and automatic registration took effect on 15 December 2021, the Sarawak state election on 18 December did not use them. The electoral roll for that election had been certified on 2 November, before the state assembly was dissolved on 3 November.