THE E-VOTING PROPOSITION

It’s time to join the rest of the world in adopting electronic voting

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, last year raised the prospect of the full introduction of electronic voting in major elections from 2021. Last week the electoral body reemphasized its commitment and called for legislation to transmit the results of 2023 elections electronically.

It is difficult to fault INEC and others clamouring for electronic voting. Elections in Nigerian have for long been marred by fraud and violence. Ballot stuffing, manipulation of manually written results, snatching of ballot boxes and compromise of election officials to falsify results and indeed outright killings, have become the norm rather than the exception. The immediate past INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega, indeed, said the electoral process in Nigeria revealed an incredible level of electoral malpractices with “acute deficiency in electoral integrity, which no doubt is among the major causes of political instability, weakness and inadequacy of the governance process”. That perhaps explains why the electoral system is increasingly transferring the onus of determining outcomes to the judiciary rather than the voters.

In advocating the use of e-voting, we are not oblivious of some possible problems it could encounter. The unreliable public power supply is one major hindrance. Training the needed manpower is another. There will also be need for sufficient voter education through intensive public enlightenment. Besides, we are conscious of the fact that the initial cost of acquiring Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines may be high. Even more, electronic voting machines are also susceptible to hacking if it is online and internet based.

Yet all things considered, we believe the time has come for Nigeria to join the rest of the world in adopting the process of e-voting. The cost of acquiring the machine which accommodates alternate languages to English like Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba and more will be recouped by eliminating ballot printing and other related printings. Namibia had since joined the ranks of modernity in 2014. A fortnight ago, Pakistan, used to voting with ballot papers like Nigeria, decided to hold the next elections through the electronic voting system. The precedent of the electoral system of various advanced democracies shows clearly that credible elections are made possible by the adoption of the best technologies. “If people these days can transfer billions of dollars from one bank to the other, using electronic means, then I believe that we can do electronic voting perfectly and that will ensure that the use of thugs during elections would be eliminated,” said former President Goodluck Jonathan. We agree.

With the deployment of technology, genuine votes of the electorate will not only be counted under a transparent process, they would also begin to count. Indeed, the consensus remains that the last Edo governorship election was one of the best elections in recent times. The deployment by INEC of more technology for uploading polling unit results helped the transparency of the process. Nigeria cannot afford to lag in deploying technology in elections, especially when many of our citizens have lost confidence in the extant electoral voting method because of its susceptibility to manipulation.

However, modernising the electoral system is predicated on amending the electoral act which the National Assembly is reworking to fit with the demands of the Presidency. Few days ago, President Buhari reassured the INEC chairman that he would do everything to ensure that the electoral body did not fail in its duty of conducting transparent election. The 2023 election is less than two years away. A new electoral act which accommodates the use of technology will be central to conducting free and fair elections.