Electronic voting machines to be used in NA-4 Peshawar by-election
ECP has also decided to use mobile phones to transfer results from polling stations to the returning officer
October 14, 2017
PESHAWAR: Electronic machines will be used for polling during the NA-4 by-election in Peshawar, a development in the country’s voting system taking place for the first time.
“Around 100 electronic voting machines, along with technical staff, have reached the constituency, NA-4 Peshawar-IV, under a proper security mechanism,” stated a press release issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan on Saturday.
“These machines will be used at 100 polling booths of 35 polling stations for the first time in the history of the country.”
The technical staff of ECP will hold a session to demonstrate how the electronic voting machines can be used. The session will be conducted in the presence of the election commissioner of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, district returning officer, returning officers and 14 contesting candidates.
Moreover, media persons would also be briefed on the use of the machines, which will reduce the duration of casting a vote to around 18 seconds.
A pilot testing session would be held to check the machines, but it would not affect the official results, and a detailed report on its performance would be shared with the Parliament and media.
Mobile phones to be used for transmission of results
Besides using machines for voting, ECP has decided to use mobile phones to send results of NA-4 Peshawar by-election from polling stations to the returning officer.
According to an official of ECP, under the pilot project, the presiding officer will send the result of respective polling stations to the returning officer through use of this new technology, “which is more efficient and fast”.
He said the result could be sent directly to the computer system of the returning officer. The ECP would be able to receive the results from polling stations faster through this system, the official added.
Earlier, ECP had introduced this project in Karachi for the by-election of PS-114 on July 2017, which was successful.
The ECP official said the commission had its own mobile phones which would be used in Peshawar by-election and that they had developed the software to receive the by-election results from 269 polling stations of Peshawar.
A training session to explain proper use of the system to presiding officers will be held next week in Peshawar, the official said. Moreover, he added, ECP’s high-ranking officials will also be able to check the election results on their mobile phones.
The seat of NA-4 in Peshawar for which by-election has been scheduled on October 26 fell vacant after Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Gulzar Khan passed away due to a heart ailment.
In the 2013 general elections, Gulzar won the constituency on a PTI ticket by garnering around 55,000 votes. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's Nasir Khan Moosazai came in second after getting around 20,000 votes.
—With additional input from APP
