Electronic voting or rigging?
Dithapelo Keorapetse | Friday August 12, 2016 17:31
The bill seeks to change the traditional method of voting through a ballot paper and ballot box to electronic voting through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The bill was brought through a certificate of urgency, something which the majority MPs from the ruling party approved while the opposition rejected the idea of fast-tracking. The Minister of Presidential Affairs and Public Administration argued that there was a need to start the ball rolling in terms of procurement of the EVMs from the Indian state company Bharat Electronics. On Tuesday, he presented the bill, reading it for the second time and MPs have started debating it. The idea is that before Parliament adjourns it should pass the bill.
Democracy presupposes that rulers are chosen by the ruled and because direct democracy in the Athenian sense is almost an impossibility, modern democracies choose representatives to represent them at their assemblies. Universal adult suffrage is a fundamental political right in liberal democracies. In addition to the right to vote, citizens in democracies have a right to participate in the affairs of their polity to ensure that rulers rule in their interest. In other words, governments in democracies are expected to be transparent, accountable and responsive.
The Constitution of the Republic of Botswana and its Electoral Act are obsolete. How can a fundamental change of the electoral process or the method of voting not be subjected to a national referendum? It is easy for one to say that it is unnecessary as the law allows it, but participatory democratic principles require that this be subjected to a yes or no vote by Batswana. When Parliament said yes to fast-tracking the bill, MPs, councillors, political parties and Batswana in general had not yet been consulted.
The rushed consultations were made between the approval of the certificate of urgency or first reading and the second reading of the bill. In other words, consultations were made whilst the process of approving the bill was ongoing, therefore, these consultations were not meaningful. Some MPs still do not understand many things about the EVMs and their ignorance is apparent in their deliberations. One MP in his support actually thought the EVMs would facilitate away voting. MPs didn’t even have a chance to ask probing questions because there was no time at their brief consultation meeting at the General Assembly. The merits and demerits of the EVMs haven’t been thoroughly discussed in consultations and many questions remained unanswered.
There are security concerns about EVMs, the machines are not without limitations. These machines come at a time when the legitimacy of the ruling party has been eroded, its popular vote is below 50%. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is not fully independent. The machines can be tampered with according to Professor Harry Prasad and others. The international conference on the Indian EVMs and temperability suggested the machines are not tamper proof.
There is evidence in computer science journals for instance International & Electronics Engineering Journal that the Indian EVMs do not meet the standard of reliability or maintenance of the sanctity of democracy. In 2004, the Supreme Court of India directed the electoral management body to consider the technical flaws of the EVM put forward by a US based software engineer, Satinath Choudhary. In Europe there is a backlash on electronic voting, the Supreme Court of Germany has ruled that the method is unconstitutional because the voter couldn’t understand precise steps involved in recording and tallying of votes.
Netherlands banned the use of electronic voting in 2006 after a video clip played showing how quick it was to hack the machines by a civic organisation Wit Vertrouwen Stemcomputers Niet.
The debate is also on in the US on the veracity of the EVMs. Trade secrets and patents protecting software programmes running EVMs also makes the entire process questionable. This is an antithesis of democracy which thrives on transparency. In fact almost 90% of the countries in the world don’t use the EVMs. In Africa it would be only Botswana and Namibia. Even advanced economies than Botswana in Africa don’t use EVMs. Why the hurry and the pressure?
In Botswana, the ruling party seeks to introduce EVMs without a verified voter paper audit trail. In Namibia where the EVMs are used, the electoral law provides for counting at polling stations before the machines are plugged into a tabulator at the main counting station. It doesn’t seem like this is envisaged in the proposed usage of EVMs. The tabulator, in the absence of counting at the polling station, shouldn’t be trusted. In Botswana, because the legitimacy of the ruling party and the state has been eroded over the recent years, ballot fraud seems highly likely through EVMs.
There is a rogue intelligence unit which is reportedly politically manipulated right at the top. The intelligence agency has been implicated in torture, unlawful arrests, extra judicial killings, corruption and economic crime and political meddling.
The mistrust of the opposition and other Batswana on EVMs is heightened by the lack of integrity of the state and the loss of public confidence in it, more than 53% of Batswana didn’t prefer the ruling party at the 2014 polls. Opposition parties shouldn’t give up on EVMs being approved by the ruling party alone, they should explore other extra-parliamentary avenues such as courts of law and protests and petitions. If they sit back, they might as well forget about winning power in 2019 because the ruling party will rig and steal the vote.