Electronic Voting system in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: (Monitoring Desk) Prime Minister Imran Khan was given a proper briefing and installation of a new electronic voting system in Pakistan is locally designed that is called Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). Shibli Faraz, the Federal Minister of science and technology said that the new Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) was developed utilizing local services and to the requirements of Pakistan Election Commission (ECP).
Mr Faraz stated that the Electronic Voting Machine was designed with the circumstances of the environment in mind and as well as the requirements of the ECP, which had previously denied the use of EVMs on technical issues.
As per the Minister, the new electronic voting system in Pakistan that is EVM was very simple and easy to use for all types of voters and polling agents, and it would remove the possibility of cheating because it would have no operating system (No any software installed in this machine) and it would not be linked to the internet connection. He also stated that the new EVM will provide actual information of the collected votes for verification in the situation of an election disagreement.
The machines are being built by the Ministry of Science and Technology’s National University for Science and Technology, Comsats University and National Institute of Engineering (NIE) using local innovations at half the cost of international gadgets. The three institutes have the ability to make 2,000 machines at a cost of around Rs. 65,000 per machine, which is half the price of foreign gadgets with no assurances of proper operation.
The machine count all the casted votes within 30 minutes to one hour by pushing a button on machine.
Now all the overseas Pakistani cast their votes with the help of I-Voting system without leaving their resident countries. The i-voting system, which enables and allows voters to double-check that their votes were counted in the total count, Babar Awan said.
The decision is made since the 2013 national general elections, the PTI has been advocating for the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) to enable foreign Pakistani cast their votes. The problems had been raised several times by PTI members in the parliamentary committee on election changes, which was chaired by then-finance minister Ishaq Dar.
What is EVM?
The EVM is the abbreviation of Electronic Voting Machine that remove the traditional system of counting paper ballots.
How to cast vote on EVM?
The processing of casting on EVM is consist on 4 stages. After verification processor in 1st stage as the in the traditional voting system, the voter go to 2nd stage where the polling officer activate the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) for vote cast. In the 3rd , the voter will go to the machine in separate in location in the room and press the button of the name and election symbol of his/her favorite candidate, then a light will go on which means that your vote has been cast. This process can be done once time only. In the 4th final stage, the voter will be able to see ballot paper falling from the top to bottom of the ballot box.
