ECP may disappoint govt again

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan will meet soon after the Eid holidays to discuss the promulgation of the ordinance introducing an electronic voting system. According to ECP sources, the move could prove disastrous if implemented in indecent haste.

The government’s ordinance, issued on Saturday, came as a surprise for the ECP which claims to have not been consulted on a matter that could have serious implications. Most crucially, it could prove disastrous for the 2023 elections.

Informed sources in the ECP warned that the 2023 elections could be a risky affair if the government decides to go for electronic voting without considering the challenges attached to such a radical change in the electoral system. The ECP will meet soon to review the situation and see whether it is possible to hold free and fair elections in the light of the electronic system that the government has implemented through a presidential ordinance.

“Firstly, it requires political will and a consensus in parliament. It is not merely a technical issue but a political one too,” an official source said, adding that the government has already wasted three long years on the issue. Since Dec 2017, several reports on electronic voting machines (EVMs), Biometric Voting Machines (BVMs) and internet voting have been submitted by the ECP to the government and presented before parliament as well but no action has been taken as yet.?

A little over two years are now left before the next general elections, which makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to do what the government and the prime minister desire. An ECP source while referring to The News story ‘Use of prohibitively costly EVMs could generate more controversies’ which appeared on Saturday, said that experts and organisations like Pildat have already warned of the serious problems that the immediate implementation of the electronic voting system could cause.

These sources also say that internet voting is not used in any developed country of the world but the PTI government wants to introduce it for overseas Pakistanis. According to these sources, internet voting is not secure both in terms of hardware and software. “That is why no country is using it,” a source says, wondering why the government is taking the risk of introducing immature and untested technologies in the elections.

“There will be software and hardware hacking risks. Countries like Ireland, Germany, UK, Finland, Holland and other developed European countries abandoned the idea of EVMs and came back to paper ballots,” the source says, adding that by introducing electronic voting, transparency will actually decrease rather than increasing. “The reality is that electronic voting is more dangerous and less transparent because most people will never know what happened inside the chipset and software,” the source says, adding that ECP experts also share the same view but they are not being heard by the government.

About the electronic voting pilot project, sources say that the scale was very small. As per reports, the ECP had purchased 150 EVMs and 100 BVMs and tested EVMs in NA-4 Peshawar on October 26, 2017 and BVMs in NA-120 Lahore on September 17, 2017 during the tenure of the previous government. Both tests were not up to the mark.

As it was a small-scale pilot project, the ECP immediately submitted its reports to parliament but there has been no official response since then. The new Chief Election Commissioner, it is said, has also sent these reports to parliament in April 2020, along with 500 printed copies, but received no serious response.

It is said that there is no way to check rigging through electronic voting, According to sources, the Indian EVMs have become controversial nationally and internationally. The 2019 Indian elections were the most controversial for using EVMs. An EVM can only provide speed but it cannot prevent ballot stuffing, capturing booths in polling stations, low women’s turnout, impersonation and other kinds of rigging. About the budget requirement, it is said that each EVM will cost at least Rs 150,000 and when it is multiplied by the 350,000 that are likely to be required, the cost will reach Rs 52 billion for the machines alone. It is explained that there will be 100,000 polling stations in the next elections and 300,000 polling booths, while in addition there will be a requirement for 50,000 machines as backup.

These are the estimates. Storage, maintenance, configuration, logistics, training and transportation will require additional money. So after a rough calculation, experts say, around Rs 120 billion will be the cost of the new experiment. The sources warn that despite this heavy cost to be borne by this poor country, after elections all losers will once again blame electronic rigging for their defeat. And the country will be back to square one once more.