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126 Ross Tapsell

Persily 2017). Below I use some examples from Malaysia’s GE14 to extend this
argument.
e rst issue concerns the microtargeting of voters. In explaining how
Invoke works, Ra zi Ramli used an example of female full-time workers in
Johor. He said big data companies categorized these voters as having only a ‘30
per cent chance of voting Pakatan’. e result is to ‘ignore her. Our candidate
will not even talk about her because it takes so much e ort to convert her.
You just focus on who falls in the marginal—it’s those issues you focus on’
(Boo 2017). Tactically this makes sense because targeting swing or undecided
voters is often the key to winning an election. To be sure, voters have been
ignored in other constituencies for similar reasons prior to the digital era. But
should political parties ‘ignore’ certain voters, categorized by gender, ethnicity,
or location, because of big data companies’ algorithms? Doing so could lead to
greater discontent around the process of elections and democratic institutions,
if some voters are being ignored and others, consistently wooed.
Alternatively, it could be argued that big data companies enable political
parties to understand details and nuances of particular groups within a
democracy. For example, a big data company could ascertain that female
workers in Johor would largely vote for BN because they think that it is the
best option to reduce immigration and maintain employment levels. e
problem here is how political parties might respond to this information. A
political party could run a scare campaign on immigration on Facebook, while
they might run completely di erent pro-immigration campaign messages
elsewhere, according to the voters they are microtargeting.
Let’s use a more concrete example. PAS’s Iskandar said each year he
organised a Chinese New Year event, and he creates a system whereby he sends
out Happy New Year messages on WhatsApp to ethnic-Chinese members
of his community. He explained, ‘In the Malay community there are some
who are very conservative. For example, even me organising a Chinese New
Year Event, some Malays will not be able to accept that. You have to be very
selective in terms of the information to various groups’ (interview, Iskandar,
Shah Alam, February 2018). Big data can also target a group of voters and use
race and religion to win them over, which could further polarize Malaysians.
It is not di cult to see how a politician could say one thing to one ethnic
group (telling Chinese communities on WhatsApp that they are pluralist),
yet say another to another ethnic group on WhatsApp (telling a Muslim
group the Chinese are a problem). Of course, politicians could advertise in
a Chinese-language newspaper stating they are pro-pluralism, while at the
same advertise in Utusan Malaysia in Bahasa Malaysia claiming the Chinese

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