E-voting machines: Govt eager, Opp dismissive of proposal

ISLAMABAD: Most major opposition parties have dismissed a proposed electoral reform being vigorously touted and pursued by Prime Minister Imran Khan: the introduction of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the next general elections.

The opposition argues that anything that is controlled and operated by others and can be handily used to manipulate electoral results is unacceptable and rejected. They add that they would strongly oppose the introduction of EVMs in parliament.

Not only has the prime minister championed the use of EVMs but President Dr Arif Alvi has also held frequent meetings to push the use of the voting machines in future elections. They have also been given demonstrations of the machines, manufactured by local state-run institutions. However, none of them has bothered to take any opposition party on board in this important debate.

“The countries where EVMs have been tried and tested have either already reverted to paper ballots or are going back to the old system for different reasons,” former Speaker and prominent Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Sardar Ayaz Sadiq told The News when contacted.

He said that during his incumbency as the speaker, two delegations had visited foreign countries to study the EVM system. One of them also included Dr Arif Alvi. “A financially tied-up country like Pakistan can’t afford billions and billions of rupees to purchase hundreds of thousands of EVMs. Additionally, because of technical problems, the country can’t ensure uninterrupted electricity supply and internet service all over Pakistan to keep the EVMs functional on polling day,” the former speaker said. “We have to keep in view our resources and capacity.”

Most importantly, Ayaz Sadiq said, anything that is controlled by others is not acceptable to the PML-N, whose mandate was stolen in the 2018 polls by deliberately breaking down the result transmission system (RTS). He said considerably less funds were required by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to hold parliamentary polls through the prevailing paper ballot system compared to the money needed to buy the EVMs.

Senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Chaudhry Manzoor told this correspondent that his government had carried out a study about the introduction of EVMs but had discarded the idea. A party committee comprising himself and a number of other senior leaders had liaised with the National Database & Registration Authority and the ECP. It had also paid a visit to India and met the top officials of the election commission. In addition, the committee had called the engineers and experts of TIP (Telephone Industries of Pakistan) for a briefing. They had told the forum that they have the technical knowhow to produce EVMs.

Chaudhry Manzoor said that when the committee had briefed President Asif Ali Zardari about its findings, he had asked a particular question: what would be a foolproof mechanism to ensure that the votes cast through the EVMs were also reflected in the results and there was no manipulation or fraudulent changes. The committee was at a loss to answer this question and consequently, the proposal was dropped, Ch Manzoor said, adding that Pakistan has a history of experiencing many rigged and engineered elections.

He said the RTS was made to collapse in the 2018 parliamentary polls to get the choice results which rendered the whole electoral process suspect.

The government’s passion to introduce electronic EVMs will remain a mere slogan unless the Elections Act, 2017 is amended without which these machines cannot be used in any election. As stated by the PML-N and PPP leaders, their parties will oppose any such amendment in the Senate. They have enough numerical strength to block any law proposed by the government.

Section 103 of the Elections Act, says the ECP may conduct pilot projects for the utilization of electronic voting machines and the biometric verification system in by-elections in addition to the existing manual procedures for voter verification, casting and counting of votes to assess the technical efficacy, secrecy, security and financial feasibility of the electronic voting machines and biometric verification system and will share the results with the government, which will lay them in parliament.

It has been stated by many observers that the EVM is not an instant solution for improving the electoral process. An EVM takes input from voters and produces outputs in a way that cannot be witnessed by external observers and election administrators. This leads to a potential problem for ensuring the transparency, trust and integrity of the system. The introduction of a voter verified paper audit trail has tried to address this issue, but not without involving the use of paper to verify the electronic votes —contradicting the very purpose of making it a paperless exercise.

It has also been pointed out that the defining challenge in the design of EVMs is to reconcile the competing requirements of the transparency of the process and the secrecy of the vote. Only a few technical experts understand the mechanics of the EVM; for non-experts, it is an opaque system that cannot be fully observed. By contrast, a paper balloting system is more transparent and tangible for stakeholders who do not have a technical background. Critics cite lack of transparency as a major reason that people in many countries are pushing back against the use of EVMs.