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My proposal for reforms in General Election / Election Commission

Bro, I have a couple of disagreements.
Most Welcome

1. Elections should be held on the same day like it is done now. Otherwise the voter choice would be said to be influenced, even if the voting result is not announced. I can anticipate your answer, but believe me this is important.
Well when the elections are held, parties are barred from making unnecessarily statements, the whole campaign runs through a certain way that the results cannot be influenced. You can see how successful this is in India, I see no reason why Pakistan should copy the Indian-model in this regard

2. We must have a paper trail. I do not trust the E-voting as a stand alone system. An inbuilt printer can spit out a slip confirming the voting choice and should have some sort of identification (thumb print?) mechanism. This would be fall-back option; plus storing slips should not be difficult at all for a a few months at least.
There is no inbuilt printer as far as I know. Even if there was we can always build voting machines without the printer. Basically the idea

  • You enter the room
  • You scan your ID card / type your ID card number by using the barcode
  • Scan your finger print (it is not available in India but we can definitely use it in Pakistan)
  • You have all the symbols of political party on screen, choose the symbol of your choice
  • Done
  • All records scored electronically within the hard drive of the device, it is not connected with the internet so no chance of hacking
  • All devices sealed securely with only the total number of votes appearing on top, you need certain password to access and read the data which is only available to Election Commission of Pakistan
  • All devices opens only when the polling has been casted all over the country
One successful hacking incident can create chaos, otherwise.

  • I am not aware of any hacking incident ever took place during the election commission process
  • It is mostly a pair of small network built within the polling booth and not connected to Internet, so no chance of it being hacked as its not part of the internet
3. All representatives of political parties must not have any access whatsoever to the polling area. There should however be security cameras in the premises. Not expensive these days.

  • Well all representatives may have an access to the polling stations but the room where the vote is being casted is always a private place. It has always happened like that
  • I am also in favour of creating a dummy room where they are taught how to cast the vote before they enter the polling booth

4. E-voting should be introduced first in the cities and then in the rural areas over two election cycles. This is controversial and debatable, and I am open to suggestions.
  • For that my proposal is to first obtain the technology and experiment in bi-elections
  • We have about 4 years left before the next general elections, enough time for experimenting pros and cons of this technology
5. E-voting machines must be protected with sufficient security.
  • Indeed, this is the topmost priority

I can not think of anything else on the fly. May come up with something in addition to these later.
Most welcome
 
  • Elections should be conducted on phase to phase basis. For example different zones might be established to monitor election at macroscopic level. One example is to divide each province in 5 units and conduct elections in each unit on a different day. It is similar to Indian-elections formula but slightly more intense
    • Day 1-2) South Punjab
    • Day 3-4) North Punjab
    • Day 5-6) East Punjab
    • Day 7-8) West Punjab
    • Day 9-10) Central Punjab
    • Day 10-15) 5 zones in K-P
    • Day 15-25) 5 zones in Sindh
    • Day 25-40) 5 Zones in Balochistan
  • E-voting
    • Electronic machines should be introduced (perhaps 200,000 might be required)
    • The machines need to be thoroughly tested out to ensure it cannot be hacked, altered or modified and use the best technology possible currently available in the world
    • The technology would ideally be able to capture the footprints of hacker if the machine was ever attempted to be altered in anyway.
    • E-voting must be introduced in bi-elections to test out all the pros and cons before the general elections
    • The machine should be simple to use so the common man can easily understand it
    • There should be widespread advertisement in both television and print media before the general elections so the common already knows how to use this machine
    • There can be extra-practice room for common man if need be where they can be taught about how to use the machine before they are allowed to go into the room for casting their vote. The symbols in the practice machine must not be identical to the symbols of the political party and the sole purpose is to get them familiar with the machine
    • There should be finger-print verification system built within the machine since Nadra holds the record of every ID card holder in Pakistan
  • Presiding Officer & Staff
    • The procedure of choosing presiding officer must be taken after building consensus amongst the political parties
    • The duty of presiding officer must be split in 4 hour shift instead of 36 hours of sleepless day-n-night work they are engaged these days with each presiding officer reporting 1 hour earlier before his shift begins
    • Staff needs to be fully trained
    • Staff need to carry out election day's practice sessions in similar-original-like demo before the real election day so they are fully aware of their responsibility
      • Since its going to be over a month activity and split from constituency to constituency I believe the availability of presiding officers, staff and all the concerned parties will be easy to arrange
  • Representation from each political party must be based in the polling station as well as the presence of Army and security agencies if need arises. The idea is to ensure that every vote that is being polled can be traced by the political party. They should be able to count the number of votes being polled but cannot have access to the records of voting-machine / ballot papers of course
  • So imagine if we have 272 constituencies (of National assembly) where the elections are held in Pakistan (if you take away reserved seats) - Imagine you have elections in only 15 constituencies per day. The whole procedure must end in 28 days only but ensure transparency in far better manner and each constituency can be monitored by every political party in more transparent manner as they will have a time to do so.
  • The safety of ballot boxes must be ensured
  • All ballot boxes / records for electronic voting opens after the elections have been conducted in every national and provincial constituency
Your opinion is highly appreciated, feel free to add more suggestions into it. This is my personal opinion so you are free to criticise


@Aether just one addition:

EVM's should be 3G / 4G supported so they can submit the real time results to centeralised database on main servers. This will make it impossible to alter the results during votes counting or recounting since the data was logged and transferred in real time while voting was in progress.

Rest of your post is spot on, great detailed suggestion sir. :tup:


E-Voting in UAE FNC Elections: A Case Study (33) | Dr. Ali Al-Khouri - Academia.edu


Please read the above case study completely which is A to Z of advanced electronic voting done in real, specially the part where they explain the process of voting and counting using pictures and diagrams and detailed text.

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From an earlier post of mine

ECP concludes probe into NA-68 rigging allegations | Page 4




i will give example of what i saw in UAE for the FNC elections (Federal National Council which is like a parliament)

1) voter will go to a personal and use his national chip ID card or biometric passport. The personal will read it electronically using a reader and check if he is a registered voter.

EP-309249918.jpg&MaxW=558&imageVersion=default

2) after being confirmed, he is then asked to proceed to the voting booths (having touch screen monitors) you see in the picture. See above picture

1183895607.jpg

EP-309249918.jpg&MaxW=558&imageVersion=default

3) the voter will place his CHIP ID card in a card reader beside the monitor. See above picture

4) the system will again verify him and after verification he will see on the screen list of candidates. See above picture

EP-309249918.jpg&MaxW=558&imageVersion=default

5) the voter will choose his candidate and after confirming his candidate a printout of his selection will print from the print. See above picture


EP-309249918.jpg&MaxW=558&imageVersion=default

EP-309249918.jpg&MaxW=558&imageVersion=default

6) the voter will then take the paper print out and cast in a separate box. See above picture

5 and 6 are for counter checks to find errors in counting of electronic vote and physical paper count.

No issues of fake inks, no issue of fake thumb impressions no issue of bogus voting no issue of fake voter lists.

We can use the above example and add to it electronic thumb verification for a more secure verification.

Source: ECP concludes probe into NA-68 rigging allegations | Page 4
 
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