Reforming electoral process: ECP unveils plan for electronic voting

Commission says system will be introduced across country within 2 years; pilot project will be conducted in two months

ISLAMABAD:

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has announced it will introduce an electronic voting system in the country within the next two years.

The commission on Tuesday called 11 vendors to demonstrate their electronic voting machines.

Talking to reporters after the demonstration, the ECP Secretary Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan said the electoral body will ask parliament to immediately make necessary changes in electoral laws to allow the introduction of an electronic voting and biometric verification system.



“ECP plans to use electronic voting as a pilot project in by-elections over the next six months,” he said. “We will request parliament to complete the necessary legislative work within the next 60 days.”

ECP has asked the vendors to give a similar demonstration to the parliamentary committee on electoral reforms. After that, a committee of technical experts from the ECP will shortlist and eventually finalise one vendor.

A similar exercise was carried out before 2013 general elections and some vendors were shortlisted. The proposal was dropped because parliament never passed the required legislation.

This time, however, the ECP secretary said he was certain that the next elections would be conducted electronically.

According to the ECP secretary, the electronic voting system will help address complications arising from manual balloting. “It will resolve the issues of the printing of ballot papers, counting and compiling of results,” he said.

When asked about cost, Ishtiaq said each unit would likely cost around $300 on average. In the last general elections, around 70,000 polling stations were set up across the country. Most of the polling stations have two polling booths, which means ECP would have to procure at least 150,000 such devices.

Asset declaration

Hundreds of lawmakers still have not filed their annual statement of assets and liabilities, despite the expiry of legal timeframe on Tuesday. Under the law, every member of parliament and the four provincial assemblies has to file details of his or her own assets along with those of their spouses and dependents by September 30 every year.



Just like in the past, lawmakers once again gave a cold shoulder to ECP’s campaign. Out of a total 1,171 members from all assemblies, only 563 lawmakers had filed their statements by Tuesday evening.

These included 77 senators, 221 National Assembly members, 111 Punjab Assembly members, 75 members of Sindh Assembly, 53 members of K-P Assembly and 25 Balochistan Assembly members.

Under law, failure to file the annual assets’ details within stipulated timeframe can cost a lawmaker his or her seat in the assembly.

The law introduced in 2002 carries several loopholes, however, and is violated routinely. It provides an undeclared grace period of another 16 days till the ECP makes public these statements.

ECP readily accepts assets’ declarations from anyone, even after the timeframe has ended. It also has no mechanism to verify whether a lawmaker filed a correct statement.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 1^st, 2014.