I condemn the introduction of electronic polling even if it is on a limited scale.
KARACHI: This is with reference to the news item “Polling reforms: ECP likely to introduce electronic voting in by-polls” (March 30). A nation succeeds when it learns from its mistakes but Pakistan just refuses to learn from its past. Having experienced the problems that were faced when computerised listings were introduced in the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) in Punjab that resulted in complete chaos where mark sheets were interchanged, records were lost and students took to the streets in protest, I condemn the introduction of electronic polling even if it is on a limited scale.
Our problem is that we love to blindly follow practices that are in vogue globally without having core knowledge about them. This is why the BISE initiative failed. The election commission must ensure that the system it is introducing has qualified, knowledgeable IT professionals running it, otherwise it is better to scrap the initiative.
Sameen Hassan
Published in The Express Tribune, May 13th, 2012.
