Pakistan to launch digital electoral system

The Election Commission of Pakistan is mulling its digitalisation pursuing models of India and Bangladesh to reform the electoral process into a computerised and fair system, taking all stakeholders onboard.

"We are strategising the computerisation of electoral process following the course of India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. It may be a lengthy process, spanning over a decade or more, but it is inevitable to reform the system," said Secretary Election Commission Ishtiak Ahmed Khan while biefing media in his recent visit to Bangladesh and about meetings with the election commission heads of South Asian states.

He said the ECP, over the past few months, has been assessing the feasibility of introducing electronic voting machines (EVM) in Pakistan what took almost 22 years in India to succeed.

"We have made significant progress on feasibility study and a final report would be issued by July end, after consultation with political parties and civil society that would be followed by a demonstration by the interested EVM suppliers.

"Five vendors who have provided information on their products, have agreed to visit Islamabad to demonstrate their products to the ECP. This demonstration will take place by end June, and key stakeholders will be invited to attend," he said.

He said the Chief Election Commissioner, Justice Hamid Ali Mirza (retd) has established a committee on the use of Electronic Voting Machines in Pakistan under the chairmanship of Joint Secretary (Elections) Syed Sher Afghan.

Referring to the five-year Strategic Plan 2010-14 of the ECP that is the outcome of consultation with various stakeholders, the secretary elaborated that the ECP is examining to implement the as the issue was also raised by the political parties in a meeting with ECP.

"Use of technology is on increase in support of the electoral process, and same is with voting process. In India EVMs have been used in pilot projects since 1980's and have more recently been introduced nationwide for all national and state elections.

Bangladesh is also in the process of developing its own EVM, as is Thailand," said Ishtiak Khan.

So far as the electoral rolls are concerned, the ECP is committed to complete the process before upcoming election in 2013.

He said it is unfortunate that the target of electoral rolls could not be achieved as the existing rolls contain multiple entries, so the ECP would ratify the issue in close collaboration with Nadra.

He said ECP is convening a meeting to be attended by Nadra authorities, government officials and representatives from opposition parties to reach a consensus on the issue and avoid further differences in future.

He said once the feasibility study is approved by the concerned authorities, the EVM project would be executed in phases, adding that no budget allocation has been made for the projects for upcoming fiscal year.

In its initial deliberations, the EVM committee discussed the global trends seen in the use of voting and counting technologies and recognised that there were considerable challenges involved introducing such technologies.