ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary panel on electoral reforms remained ambivalent with regards to incorporating use of electronic voting machines (EVM) systems in law, as election authorities on Monday failed to satisfy a committee on solutions to deal with possible maneuvering in these machines.
An eight-member sub-committee of the parliamentary panel for electoral reforms received a demo of sample machines from three vendors -- two government organisations and a private manufacturer.
During the in-camera meeting on Monday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) briefed the committee about merits and demerits of the use of EVMs for polling.
The sub-committee was told that there was no mechanism which was 100% fool-proof or that use of EVMs would mitigate chances of poll rigging.
They were told that in Germany and India, where these machines are used, their deployment was not without complaints.
The committee asked the ECP to come up with concrete proposals of all possible solutions since the project will cost the national exchequer billions of rupees. The committee was told that an EVM, with built-in biometric voter verification system, would cost between Rs60,000 and Rs70,000 each with the ECP requiring around 275,000 such machines.
The sub-committee, led by Science and Technology Minister Zahid Hamid and comprising members who were mostly senior politicians and officials with legal backgrounds -- sought solutions to avoid such possible maneuverings. However, the technical teams of the ECP and EVM vendors failed to satisfy the committee who were asked to come up with concrete proposals with maneuver-proof technological solutions.
The panel will meet again on Tuesday and will consider, among other things, changes in the Political Parties Order 2002.
COMMENTS (10)
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The safest, most convenient, cheapest by far and requiring no new or additional machines is voting by telephone... any telephone, even if it is a call phone. The ECP will issue a Personal Voting Number to each voter. The voter will create three PIN numbers. The voting computer will receive the vote from the phone. The PIN number not only protects the PVN it allows verification of the vote before and after counting. I can explain in detail if asked. Biometric machines are expensive to install, service and are not ''dhandli'proof.. Phone voting is the way to unfettered democracy. Only those benefitting from the present archaic system support it. ET please contact me.
@naeem khan: How do you know, have you ever lived in these countries. I voted on November 4 and every one used EVMs in Manhattan, Kansas and even small village like Ogden Kansas was using the same kind of machines. Don't be saying things when you are so ignorant of.
@naeem khan: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting 29.8% of voting in US is through electronic voting. Switzerland too uses electronic voting. For some reason you have chosen o ignore India where more people actually cast a vote in 2014 than the number of people who oted in US, UK, Germany, France, , canada, Australia put together.
In 2004 and 2014 there was a change in government and there would have been an outcry if foulplay had been suspected.
@A-No.1: Spot on comment. Why go for fancy expensive systems when the senior students at NUST have said they could devise an almost foolproof system fro available infrastructure.
So in other words India, USA and other countries using EVMs are committing a fraud..... My question is what technical expertise has been hired by govt. to look into this matter.... ? Nowadays even cell phones and cats gave thumb print recognition chip then why it is so hard for these people to understand that world gas moved and they have yo catch up...
The only way any one can convince the sub-committee to gaurantee them that all sub-committee members will be offerred life long membership to the parliament without election, so they don't worry about not being elected if election is free and fair.
Not only will they not accept electronic voting but they are also too stupid to even understand technology and hence easily fooled by anyone.
if electronic voting was foul proof countries like USA UK France GB and Germany who are technologically advanced and manufacture would have been using electronic voting they don't do that because these machines are easy to manipulate IK who has spend considerable time in the west knows that but he is just making a mountain of a mole hole
Why should the EVM have a built in bio metric system? While this will be nice to have, such a facility requires the EVM to be linked to a central database containing bio metric data. And as soon as a linkage becomes necessary, it opens out the theoretical possibility of data manipulation. To avoid this, it may be better to keep the EVM standalone and have a separate bio metric checker in the polling booth
There is no way these guys are going to accept electronic voting. They are part of the entrenched riggers.