Electronic Voting Machine: ECP to seek views of political parties, voters

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan said on Wednesday prior to taking a decision on the use of technology, it will like to have confidence of political parties and other stakeholders, including voters being its constitutional obligation

In this connection, the Election Commission will initiate consultative process with the stakeholders shortly. Two back-to-back meetings of the Election Commission were held on June 1 and June 2 under the chairmanship of Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja. It was attended by members of the Election Commission, Secretary Election Commission and other senior officers. The purpose of the meeting was to observe the performance of the prototype of the electronic voting machine, presented by the Ministry of Science and Technology. However, the Ministry informed that the prototype EVM will be completed by the third week of July 2021, after which its demo will be given to the ECP.

The Election Commission had already given the electoral requirements of the machine to the Ministry of Science and Technology. On this basis, the Ministry had to prepare technical specifications of the EVM prototype.

The ECP thanked the officials of the Ministry of Science and Technology and said that the ECP was committed to using technology in elections but we need to reach a decision. First of all, the trust of all stakeholders, including political parties and voters, should be sought being the constitutional responsibility of the Election Commission. The ECP intends to start consultations with political parties in this regard soon.

The second meeting was held on Internet Voting. In the meeting, Secretary Ministry of Information Technology, other senior officials and representatives of the Spanish consultancy firm reviewed the comparative aspects in the briefing on the technical audit report of Internet voting system prepared by NADRA. The system developed by NADRA was compared with the Mexican, French and Estonian systems. The Election Commission was informed that France has now stopped using the I voting system while Mexico and Estonia are gradually experimenting with their system.

The consultant firm informed the Election Commission that the I-voting system developed by NADRA is not world class and made recommendations to make it in line with modern technology. The chief election commissioner has now convened another meeting of the Election Commission next week in which the report of the consultant firm will be reviewed in detail.