Electoral system to go digital: ECP - Pakistan

[Hyde]

Electoral system to go digital: ECP​

Updated at: 2329 PST, Monday, June 07, 2010
ISLAMABAD: 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.

 

[sparklingway]

India's EVMs present a perfect model for us. Use the NIE for this project rather than the private sector as NIE hardly does any work despite being adequately funded and infrastructure at its disposal. It should be expanded further but it needs to do projects.

Electronic Voting, even counting, is unrealizable event at pilot scale in the next elections. Perhaps, we'll use them in the next to next ones (hopefully that will be 8 years from now). ECP seems to be working hard. Best of luck to CEC and Secretary ECP.

 

[Luftwaffe]

Even Philippines has EV system. But regardless of what system comes to Pakistan; fraud will always take place.

 

[raleigh22]

India's EVMs present a perfect model for us.

Indian EVMs have generally been good.
Though after losing their 2nd general election in a row, some in the BJP began accusing the ruling party of manipulating EVMs.

Recently, I also came across this website.
India's EVM are Vulnerable to Fraud

which has various demonstrations of how an EVM could be rigged.
But the methods do require physical access to the machine.

The Philippines machines require the voter to make a mark on a ballot paper which is then counted by a machine.
This may be better in the sense that it leaves a paper trail unlike the Indian machines.

 

[sparklingway]

The EVMs in India which allows only 5 votes per minute are a perfect resolution to ballot stuffing. India achieved the best electoral transparency among SAARC countries in the previous decade.

 

[brahmastra]

Indian EVM

Benefits

The cost per EVM (One Control Unit, one Balloting Unit and one battery) was Rs.5,500/- at the time the machines were purchased in 1989-90. Even though the initial investment was somewhat heavy, it was more than neutralised by the savings in the matter of production and printing of ballot papers in lakhs, their transportation, storage etc., and the substantial reduction in the counting staff and the remuneration paid to them.
It will be easier to transport the EVMs compared to ballot boxes as EVMs are lighter, portable and come with polypropylene carrying cases.
The vote-counting is very fast and the result can be declared within 2 to 3 hours as compared to 30–40 hours, on an average, under the ballot-paper system.
In countries like India, where illiteracy is still a factor, illiterate people find EVMs easier than ballot paper system, where one has to put the voting stamp on the symbol of the candidate of his/her choice, fold it first vertically and then horizontally, and put it into the ballot box. In EVMs, the voter has to simply press the blue button against the candidate and symbol of his choice and the vote is recorded.
Bogus voting can be greatly reduced by the use of EVMs. In case of ballot paper system, a bogus voter can stuff thousands of bogus ballot papers inside the ballot box. But, an EVM is programmed to record only five votes in a minute. This will frustrate the bogus voters. Further, the maximum number of votes that can be cast in a single EVM is 3840.
If an EVM goes out-of-order then, the Election Officer, in-charge of the polling booth, can replace the defunct EVM with a spare EVM. The votes recorded until the stage when the EVM went out of order remain safe in the memory of the Control Unit and it is not necessary to start the poll from the beginning.
The Control Unit can store the result in its memory for 10 years and even more. The battery is required only to activate the EVMs at the time of polling and counting. As soon as the polling is over, the battery can be switched off and this will be required to be switched on only at the time of counting. The battery can be removed as soon as the result is taken and can be kept separately. Therefore, there is no question of battery leaking or otherwise damaging EVMs. Even when the battery is removed the memory in the microchip remains intact. If the Court orders a recount, the Control Unit can be reactivated by fixing the battery and it will display the result stored in the memory.
Invalid votes can be avoided by use of EVMs. When ballot system was used in India, the number of invalid votes was more than the winning margin between the candidates in every general elections. With EVMs, there are no invalid votes.[citation needed]
Since EVMs work on a 6-volt battery, there is absolutely no risk of any voter getting an electric shock.

from: wikipedia

 

[Awesome]

What I don't like about the electronic voting (or the manual voting) is that who I casted my vote to is not recorded.

You may think this gives security to people, but in reality this also opens everything up for cheating. Record it, just keep it hidden with shared security keys keeping the data encrypted.

For example if I want to come and vote, I key in my ID card number and then vote. Then I can go online and see if my vote was changed or something. If there is any discrepancy I can highlight the issue.

According to one of the designers of this system I spoke to last year, India's system also detaches the voter from the vote. I suggested my idea to him lets see if he manages to get approval for it.

Back when the manual system was going on it would've been a lot more difficult then.

 

[brahmastra]

What I don't like about the electronic voting (or the manual voting) is that who I casted my vote to is not recorded.

you don't need to record your vote.
because if you can see whom you voted after going your home and make sure that it doesn't changed that means political parties can also check it as it is not difficult to bribe government employee in any of south asian country.

 

[Awesome]

The EVMs in India which allows only 5 votes per minute are a perfect resolution to ballot stuffing. India achieved the best electoral transparency among SAARC countries in the previous decade.

Problem is, if I have the database access, I can go like "update votes set vote_count = 1000000 where candidate = 'ASIM'"

That is all that it will take to break that system.

I think we need an online system where Overseas Pakistanis can cast their votes as well. Hire me, hire me!

 

[sparklingway]

What I don't like about the electronic voting (or the manual voting) is that who I casted my vote to is not recorded.

You may think this gives security to people, but in reality this also opens everything up for cheating. Record it, just keep it hidden with shared security keys keeping the data encrypted.

For example if I want to come and vote, I key in my ID card number and then vote. Then I can go online and see if my vote was changed or something. If there is any discrepancy I can highlight the issue.

According to one of the designers of this system I spoke to last year, India's system also detaches the voter from the vote. I suggested my idea to him lets see if he manages to get approval for it.

Back when the manual system was going on it would've been a lot more difficult then.

This opens a sea of problems and a hellhgate for backlash from political powers on poor people who promise their votes in exchange for a square meal or a small amount of money. It establishes a system that is extremely, extremely vulnerable to abuse from electoral candidates.

The EC has to weigh whether your need to verify the authenticity of your vote is more important or whether it is important to maintain invisibility and thus protect citizen's privacy. Also note the additional cost of maintaining such a database, especially since it will most probably be a de-centralized one in a country (like Pakistan and India) where it will be difficult to transfer data over a secure connection from remote areas and announce results quickly as well.

Your need to seek accountability is far less important. I'll trust the EC, the dozens of observers and transparency bodies to establish the fairness of the elections rather than opening a possibility of abuse. Also, the proposal of voting lists with pictures from NIC seeks to remove many possibilities.

 

[Kompromat]

The Machine should be like an ATM machine with a High resolution camera , a swipe through NIC detection device and a thumb print recognizing machine.

A Voter should swipe his/her NIC card , Give his/her Thumb Print and get his photo taken automatically Before the Cast your vote option appears on the screen.

Once a vote is casted the person would be automatically written off the voters list and wont be able to recast the vote on the polling station nearby.


often the example of elections in Pakistan is "jooton main daal battna" , i remember i was in my teens when i casted Multiple votes for Mushi's Referendum drama .

I didn't know what i was doing , me and many of my friends who were playing cricket were called by some people and to give our thumb prints while we looked at each other's faces knowing nothing about what were our prints being used for.


It must be stopped and the answer is technology.

 

[sparklingway]

Problem is, if I have the database access, I can go like "update votes set vote_count = 1000000 where candidate = 'ASIM'"

They do not use a database. Perhaps you understood the system wrong or I am interpreting you wrong. The memory inside each EVM stores its own 3840 votes. They are transferred to the control machine by physical access and this is done at the central polling station in the presence of the presiding officer. By counting all votes from machines and running all anti-fraud checks (yes they have checks), the presiding officer announces the result. The control unit can store the results for long periods of time but a central database of any sorts is never established. This is the beauty of the system that whilst maintaining a paper ballot like system, it eliminates the need for computer literacy and the possibilities of fraud concerning the sophisticated electronic voting systems (the touchscreens, secure lines, database and all). A central database is prone to fraud through direct access and spying over data transfer as well.

As for the tampering proved by engineers, it requires physical access. Even though they show that the sealing wax (much like in our country thanks to our colonial history) can be faked after tampering with the machine, it requires at least more than half an hours access to the machine. As each machine counts only 3,840 votes and polling stations in India are generally limited to 1,400 people, they will have to tamper with hundreds, if not dozens of machines to rig any national election seat. That requires a long time and as EVMs are secured like ballot boxes and ballot papers before election day and during the whole process, the possibility is remote.

People working in the EVM business in the US are pissed of at the Indian EVMs for they provide a cheap, reliable, nearly secure and efficient system. What they always imagined was a system that did not involve thousands of polling agents and only fancy systems with databases. Sadly, in India and Pakistan, this is a remote possibility and India has paved the way forward for us. If any local company fails to provide a reliable one (don't hope so), we should just buy them from India. There isn't any shame in accepting that they have come forward with a truly great thing.

 

[sparklingway]

The Machine should be like an ATM machine with a High resolution camera , a swipe through NIC detection device and a thumb print recognizing machine.

A Vote should swipe his NIC card , Give his Thumb Print and get his photo taken automatically Before the Cast your vote option appears on the screen.

Once a vote is casted the person would be automatically written off the voters list and wont be able to recast the vote on the polling station nearby.

The Indian solution is the way it is for remote areas lack necessary telecommunication facilities and such a system costs extremely high. The 6volt battery is used for even electricity cannot be guaranteed in remote areas (it can no longer be guaranteed in our urban areas as well). Also, read my above post for the security reasons and further rising costs associated with electronic verification.

National elections cost extremely high. With such an expensive system, and the need to reduce the number of voters at each polling station (recommended to be <3,000), the cost would be in hundreds of billions, perhaps matching our entire development budget.

 

[Spring Onion]

Imran Khan will be happy because he had recently sent a letter for installing the same system

 

[Kompromat]

Imran Khan will be happy because he had recently sent a letter for installing the same system

Maybe because he is leading the Virtual polls