Confusion looms large over overseas voting

ISLAMABAD: As the government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) plans to develop a consensus on a newly-proposed law to ensure participation of overseas Pakistanis in upcoming general elections, state institutions that are responsible for conducting free and fair polls face mammoth challenges.

Geo News conducted multiple background interviews and approached several stakeholders to learn about the impediments in overseas voting. These findings suggest that the time constraint, preparation of new software, protection of voter privacy, budgetary restraints and lack of consensus among institutions and major political parties remained key hurdles in overseas e-voting or postal ballot.

Government's fresh bill to amend the 'Elections Act, 2017' has earned a huge backlash from almost all stakeholders, ranging from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to opposition political parties in the Parliament. The ‘Election Act (Amendment) Bill, 2020' is aimed to give the right of voting to overseas Pakistanis and to provide for the use of electronic voting machines in upcoming elections.

But the ECP in its reaction has termed the government's newest proposed amendments on protecting secrecy of vote, manner of extending right to vote to overseas Pakistanis, adopting internet voting system, etc. as measures against the spirit of the Constitution.

According to the ECP, the government's "amendment does not provide as to how the technical efficacy, secrecy, security and financial feasibility would be finalised -- for finalisation of such measures, necessary legislation is required in the absence of which the manner of extending the right to vote to overseas Pakistanis cannot be fulfilled."

ECP chief Sikandar Sultan Raja says the country's top polls body, in order to exercise its mandate, requires necessary legislation as to 'whether there would be separate seats to be filled by overseas Pakistanis voting, what kind of procedure will be required to be adopted for polling and whether there would be polling stations established abroad or it would be an online voting.'

"One proposed amendment undermines ECP's power of seeking assistance from any institution -- as this amendment restricts the ECP to take assistance from NADRA. The ECP, under Article 220, can seek assistance from all executive authorities in discharge of its duties of making arrangements for the conduct of free, fair and transparent elections under Article 218(3)," the ECP chief said.

The representatives of federal government say that they have already invited the opposition to review all the 62 proposed amendments on election reforms. Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry says that PTI wants overseas people to vote in upcoming elections. "It is the best choice for us [Pakistanis]. But PML-N and PPP do not want their [expats] inclusion after they lost their [expats] support," Chaudhry said.

Two major parties, PML-N and PPP, expressed their concern over the new proposed law following the ECP's stance, which does not support 28 of the total 62 proposed amendments. Background meetings with some government officials, however, suggest that providing timely voting facilities overseas by October 2023 would be a daunting task for the ECP and NADRA.

Maiden exercise on the direction of the apex court, to allow overseas Pakistanis to cast their vote through internet-voting system was done in October 2018 by-elections. The results were not very encouraging. Over 632,233 overseas Pakistanis from 37 constituencies, settled in 177 countries, were eligible to vote, only 7,364 (1pc) registered themselves to vote and 6,233 cast their vote.

Before this, mock polling was conducted at Pakistani missions abroad in Saudi Arabia, UK, US and Dubai in 2017 but the ECP faced a huge problem in handling postal ballots, even when the participation remained extremely low. Experts pointed out that over 60pc of NICOP holders residing in Saudi Arabia and the UAE belong to the labour class and do not have access to an email facility to get the ballot papers.

The ECP’s report on the I-voting pilot done in 2018 states: “The secrecy of the ballot is highly vulnerable and we would be totally compromising it, to accommodate a political slogan." Opposition parties also endorsed an international audit firm Minsait’s report that in its findings exposed that the existing internet voting system of Pakistan was inadequate in ensuring secrecy of the voting process. "Neither the voters, nor the Election Commission of Pakistan, would have any guarantee that the results obtained from the system represent the choices made by the voters,” the report revealed. The firm conducted the audit on the request of the Ministry of Information, Technology and Telecommunications, on design and implementation of internet voting for overseas Pakistanis applied in a by-poll of 2018 elections.

State institutions also face the hurdle of huge expenditure required for conducting I-voting. Informed officials in ECP and NADRA told Geo News that a single vote cast by overseas Pakistanis could cost the national exchequer over Rs20,000. The ECP would have to spend over two billion rupees even if only 5pc overseas Pakistanis cast their votes, through the internet-voting system in October 2023 polls, they added.

Experts also fear that if Pakistan conducts this exercise of allowing overseas citizens to cast their vote, it would create an unending debate linked to litigation, charges of rigging and manipulating election results.

Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and France stopped their e-voting program for expats after fear of cyber attacks. Germany and Poland even faced cyber attacks, which marred the fairness of their elections and courts were flooded with complaints. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance's research revealed that as many as 151 countries and territories allow voters abroad to cast ballots in some capacity around the world. Some 55 countries and territories do not allow any voting from abroad.

Legal issues as well as logistics and privacy are major concerns shared by the Election Commission of India and other regulators, working towards the possibility of Non-Resident Indians to vote through postal ballot in the upcoming elections. Experts fear that Pakistan's efforts for overseas voters involvement may meet similar hurdles as neighbouring India.

Bilal Gilani of Gallup Pakistan says, "My personal assessment is that overseas voting would have close to no impact on Pakistan’s elections." He is of the opinion that even the figure of 8 million or so diaspora is deeply flawed. "Pakistani diaspora based in the Gulf and those in the West are of two extremes. In the Gulf, the workers may not be able to exercise their vote because of their work commitments, as well as complicated procedures to vote. The ones in the West would mimic the voting behaviour of urban Pakistan, which has notoriously low turnout," Bilal Gilani told Geo News.