Six to eight million Pakistanis have been silently disenfranchised because their vote is listed at a permanent address
KARACHI: With no upper limit on the number of seats, consider one extreme scenario where a candidate stands for all 272 NA general seats. If he wins all, he can essentially force the government of Pakistan to hold a second general election — which will legally be termed a by-election. Making taxpayers pay for the by-elections on any vacated seat is unethical, unreasonable and completely avoidable. How come the ECP is happy to live with this lacuna.
Six to eight million Pakistanis have been silently disenfranchised because their vote is listed at their permanent address, while they reside (some for past many years) in a different city/place. The ECP has been unable to devise a simple mechanism for change of polling address. Most individuals could not waste a day or two going to ECP offices and following their bureaucratic procedures. The ECP could learn from other countries where such a change can be made on a cell phone or the internet.
The ECP has failed to use the NADRA-linked biometric voting machines which are being used in many countries for the last two decades. The ECP’s archaic processes are hugely vulnerable to errors such as multiple voting, voting on another person’s card and even voting on behalf of those who are dead.
Voters have been deprived of the much-needed NOTA (None of the Above) option just as the overseas Pakistanis have been deprived of their right to vote. Is it not high time for the ECP to reform its processes and begin to think outside the wooden ballot box?
Naeem Sadiq
Published in The Express Tribune, June 29th, 2018.
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