Voting need not be painstaking

| Wednesday June 11, 2014 06:00

According to its officers, the initiatives include dividing and grouping voters alphabetically, as well as setting up checkpoints to ensure that voters have the necessary documents before proceeding.

At the checkpoints, the voters will also be told which alphabetic group they belong to and receive any other help they require. Despite perennial accusations of organisational ineptitude, largely levelled by disgruntled politicians, the IEC has generally acquitted itself well in terms of forethought and delivery.

The organisation successfully conducted an initial registration exercise and two supplementaries with minimal glitches and has timeously produced voters’ rolls for inspection in accordance with electoral law.

Its latest initiatives are indeed welcomed as part of the national ideal of extending access to the democratic process to all Batswana. There is room for improvement, naturally, and in this light, the necessary changes may be beyond the IEC statutory limitations.

More fluidity is required in the transfer of voter registrations, for instance, to enable one constituent to electronically vote for a candidate in a different constituency.

At present, the IEC encourages Batswana to register and vote at their primary residence to avoid transfers and the incidence of voter trafficking. Transfers have been offered since 2004, but the provision has never been cast in stone.

Batswana who would like to vote in constituencies different from their primary residence, are thus forced to incur the costs of travelling inordinate distances to register in their preferred areas.

Besides the cost, the system inherently favours the mature, rural voter who most likely resides in the area they would like to vote in. The formally employed, younger voter renting accommodation in an urban area is forced by circumstances to register where he/she lives, incur high costs or miss the boat entirely. With E-voting, a voter could register online or electronically, then vote in the constituency of their choice for the candidates of their choice, without leaving the comfort of their home or office.

E-voting could be the ideal solution for the costs involved in providing voter registration services to a sparsely distributed population, by allowing registration via mobile telephone, internet and other digital means. The country’s numerous ICT policies, including e-government, as well as the robust infrastructural backbone, would support the integrity of the electronic voting system, while policymakers can plug whatever gaps exist. If this sounds too ambitious, the IEC has the option of opening up electronic registration at its offices, where urbanites and others could then register to vote in different constituencies, again reducing the cost of the voting process. These are just the tip of the iceberg in possibilities of optimising the efficiency of the voting process and thus tackling the apathy and inherent bad faith many younger voters seem to hold.

Today’s thought

“I believe that voting is the first act of building a community as well as building a country.”

 - John Ensign