An electronic future

There appears to be universal agreement that there needs to be electoral reform in Pakistan. There are many facets to reform and there is no commonly agreed agenda, but the introduction of electronic voting machines (EVM) as proposed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is an item on the agenda whose adoption we are wholly supportive of. This is no small matter and could at a stroke address one of the key issues that have surrounded every election since the foundation of the state — namely ballot rigging. EVMs first made an appearance in the 1960s and have slowly been adopted internationally. They are not without their detractors and there have been well-documented instances where EVMs have recorded wrong results, but there is nothing in the literature to suggest that an electoral outcome would have been reversed as a result of flaws in the EVM hardware or software. The last Indian election was conducted using EVMs, and many countries in South America have been using them without difficulty for a decade.



Whatever their deficits, the benefits of using EVMs in a country such as Pakistan that has a high proportion of illiterates in the population, are clear. It is going to require Parliament to amend the electoral law to allow the introduction of an electronic voting and biometric verification system and it is not going to be a cheap exercise, as each EVM is going to cost around $300. The ECP is planning to pilot the use of EVMs during the upcoming by-elections.

Curiously, an exercise to select a vendor for EVMs was carried out before the 2013 election, but never progressed because Parliament never passed the required legislation. There are those for whom the advent of the EVM will be bad news indeed as whilst rigging in terms of electronic manipulation of machines and results is possible depending on the type of machine selected, it is also extremely difficult to achieve and requires technical competencies that are thin on the ground in Pakistan. Any reform that brings greater transparency to the electoral process is to be welcomed, and the EVM is long overdue.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 2^nd, 2014.

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