Implementing Biomatric Voting System In Pakistan: An Anaytical Review

Abstract

Credibility of General Elections in less-stable developing countries has mostly remained a bone of contention. State machinery or political parties are held responsible for election related violence/irregularities/systematic manipulations/rigging. In Pakistan, after general elections of 2013, a number of political parties demanded electoral reforms, including the introduction of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM)/ Biometric Voting System (BVS), to limit opportunities for election rigging. Several academic studies, conducted by private/ non-institutionalized members or political activists on the subject of Electoral Reforms, propose the use of Biometric Verifications and Electronic Voting. However, keeping in view the ground realities the Election Commission of Pakistan pointed out that, it lacks the capability/capacity to support such an initiative due to technological and technical limitations. Those constraints include enormous cost of induction, maintenance and reliability of machines, connectivity issues in far flung areas and non-availability of mega speed servers to support the massive two-way data-flows, in a speedy, effective and uninterrupted fashion, giving expeditious results of the voters’ identification/ verification. Clearly, such a situation poses serious challenge to an apparently effective and smart looking solution, when put to test on ground. Although Election Commission maintains that Biometric Voting Systems are quite safe and most temper-proof equipment is available in the world. However, still numerous security flaws have been observed in these machines. Several security analysts have rejected such equipments for being ‘vulnerable to fraud.’ Refuting the ‘temper-proof’ claims by the supporters/ proponents of the idea, many have also been questioning the efficacy of these machines under realtime/ load-prone situations. A host of technologists believe that these machines/equipments could be hacked and manipulated, or face malfunctions/ technical difficulties or major breakdowns as was demonstrated in other countries.Thus, although, at conceptual level, such initiative appears to be constructive, but due to some technical and structural flaws it can be counterproductive. Therefore, due to concerns about the viability and reliability of Electronic Voting Systems some developed countries are reverting back to a paper-based system of voting.