Prospects of E-voting

Elections 2013 turned out to be a landmark in the history of our country, having witnessed the highest ever voter turnout. We saw women, old, young and even infirm citizens braving the rigours of waiting in lines to cast their vote. The people of Pakistan had fulfilled their civic responsibility and overwhelmingly supported democracy. However there were some reports of irregularities that marred this phenomenal commitment to a democratic-elected form of governance.
The people of Pakistan had no doubt won, but the electoral process needs a rethink, as the ECP did not take into account the human factor whose efficiency and corruption are the bane of our society. The irregularities that were highlighted by our vibrant media during the elections 2013 were as follows:
---- A number of polling stations did not have the ballot boxes, ballot paper or stamp in time, in some cases, the polling staff was also not available. Hence resulting in tremendous inconvenience and despair to a large number of people.
---- TV footages of open ballot boxes with ballot papers were seen lying around unaccounted.
---- A complete ballot book was shown on TV with stamps already affixed.
---- TV footage of a person stuffing a number of ballot papers in the ballot box was shown who was allowed to walk away without any intervention.
---- A large number of alleged polling staff was shown to be affixing stamps on the ballot papers.
---- There was a power breakdown at 2am in many areas of Punjab during the counting of votes; this too could have led to wrong results.
---- There were complaints of many candidates who were leading till the end but the results announced were different.
---- The results should only have been announced by the ECP as soon as these were received, instead of TV channels announcing results prematurely. This also showed a lack of discipline by the presiding officers.
---- The fingerprint needs to be captured with a special magnetic ink if it has to be verified by Nadra's AFIS (Automatic Fingerprint Identification System). The fingerprint has to be first scanned and then its image taken for conversion into a template for matching with the stored template in the database. In this election, the polling station where I cast my vote, an inkpad was used. Such a poor quality image can only be manually verified (if not smudged).
A step in the right direction taken by ECP was to use Nadra for verification and de-duplication of CNICs, resulting in giving the nation, the most credible electoral rolls in our country's history. The ECP did not allow Nadra to do this exercise in the 2002 and 2008 elections. Nadra is a technically-oriented organisation which has credible data which very few countries can boast; additionally it also has the capability to serve the nation in whichever capacity it is asked to do.
The elections are over and the people have given their mandate, the time is now to move forward. However, is a requirement that the present outdated and loophole-riddled electoral system needs a rethinking to strengthen the democratic process. Thanks to our media, we have a highly aware and well-informed populace irrespective of their education level. The next five years will further increase their capacity to judge right from wrong and the country's citizens will not tolerate a similar election in 2018 or earlier. Let us strengthen democracy by addressing issues seen in this election. Let me very briefly introduce an electronic voting system that mitigates most of the anomalies reported in this election. It is a first step towards apprising our elected leaders to ponder over this real issue and give the nation a solution that ensures a free and fair voting process. The people of Pakistan and all democratic institutions deserve a better and more transparent system.
The first and foremost step for a credible election is the accuracy of the electoral rolls; ECP has successfully achieved this aspect by utilising Nadra's database. The digitalised rolls will have the data of all CNICs issued to the citizens of Pakistan and will include, voter's name, CNIC number, father's name, constituency and photograph (by 2018, we should be able to optically scan and replace the fingerprints of the 29 million citizens whose fingerprints could not be inserted into the database (AFIS) as ID cards were issued, through the form filled by the citizens, with ink-based images of the fingerprints). This data will constitute the digital format of the electoral rolls which will be populated in a central server to be placed in the Election Commission. The final data for the entire country will have two back-ups in separate storage devices; one to be given to the Chief Election Commissioner and the other to his nominee for safe keeping. The back-up may also be used for audit if required at a later stage and would constitute the correct electronic version of the electoral rolls to be used in case of any anomalies reported before, during or after the election.
FEATURES OF AN ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE An Electronic Voting System (EVM) is designed and developed with aim to provide total transparency, ease of use and non interference from any outside quarters. The system should provide a user-friendly, touch-based display of candidates' photographs and election symbols to voters to cater for use by the uneducated population in the rural areas. All electronic Voting machines should be connected to the central server with the capability to transfer data in real-time through GSM that is through encrypted SMS. This has been made possible due to the wide mobile coverage that is presently available and can be further increased to uncovered areas in the next year or so. These EVMs can then be placed at each polling station. The system should authenticate the voter, his constituency, ensure that he has not voted anywhere else and is a first time voter, then display the photograph & election symbol of the candidates. Once a vote has been cast, by the 1:1 live fingerprint match, it should automatically send the CNIC of the selected candidate through an encrypted SMS to the ECP central serve. We would thus be to do away with ballot boxes, ballot paper or stamps or even manual counting. Additionally, a printout should also be generated that can be seen by the voter before it falls into a box so that the next voter has a blank screen. This is the paper audit trail for authentication as and when required. The system will then be a foolproof EVM with real time results. Since the system is to be an icon-based touch screen that gives the election symbols as well as the photograph of the candidates every segment of our society would use it effectively as it is easier to use than a mobile phone. Once the photograph or an election symbol is touched, a full screen photograph and election symbol would appear for reconfirmation. The voter would also have the option to go back and select a different candidate of his/her choice. By 2018 we should also have the fingerprint data of our voters and the EVM should have an in-built optical Fingerprint scanner that should authenticate a 1:1 live fingerprint match to vote. It must also have an in built battery which can be charged if required by a solar mat/small charging set or additional batteries to be a viable option in areas without electricity, which unfortunately is a sizeable area and affects a large percentage of our population. Luckily, our mobile coverage is more than 90% and can be enhanced to cover the entire country in the next two years.
Individual machines must be aligned to dedicated mobile towers to ensure no ingress from unauthorised mobile messages. These towers should not be allowed any other traffic on the Election Day so that the system does not get choked. Every EVM should have a specified SIM tagged to the designated mobile towers. Since a short code is to be issued by PTA, it will only come to the ECP terminal.
The entire security and transparency aspects are fairly comprehensive; however, a concept paper on all aspects has been authenticated through an existing system made in Pakistan. We must strengthen our institutions especially the ECP by having a rethinking of our entire election process. A parliamentary committee should recommend ways and means to ensure ease and transparency in our voting process.
(The writer is the former chairman of Nadra)