On the polling day, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) received over 80 complaints from women on their designated voter hotline.
A large percentage of the calls were about women being barred from voting by male relatives and tribal elders.
“Several female voters called our telephone hotline from Chakwal in Punjab to complain of disenfranchisement,” Altaf Ahmad, the Public Relations Director at the ECP, told Geo.tv.
“We immediately informed our returning officers in the area, who took steps to ensure that women were allowed to cast a ballot.”
Similar complaints were received from some constituencies of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The swift action proved rewarding. Chakwal, which is divided between the constituencies NA-64 and NA-65, registered a 60 per cent and 59 per cent female voter turnout respectively, by the end of the day.
Women also reported long lines and a slow processing time of the Commission’s message verification service (8300), which the election staff insists it worked on throughout the day to rectify.
There were also isolated reports of the service not providing the correct address of the polling station.
On July 25, the ECP set up a control room for complaints and a separate gender cell for female, transgender and minority voters. Both control rooms, constituted of over a dozen teams, began working from 6 AM and wrapped up after voting concluded.
Nationwide, on voting day, the ECP said it received over 600 complaints; of which only 80 were by women.