Abbas Jimoh
18 November 2008
As reactions continue to trail the presidential elections in the United States of America, Nigeria has been urged to begin to educate citizens on the need to adopt the electronic voting method.
A commissioner in the Jigawa State Independent Electoral Commission, Alhaji Alili Galadima, made the call while speaking with journalists in Abuja.
Galadima, monitored the U.S. election that brought in Barack Obama as the first black president of that country, said, "America is truly practicing real democracy, I say this because I am impressed with what I saw there."
He said, "At the polling centres, everything went on smoothly with the party agents seen outside displaying the posters of their candidates. But inside where the actual voting was taking place, there was no agent, you only see the electoral officers, the security agents and the voters, no party agent was there and nobody was telling anybody whom to vote for, there were no intimidation of any kind."
He said he monitored the elections in two centres of the District of Columbia and Virginia and that there was a great difference with what obtains in Nigeria.
"The Americans used the electronic voting system which is faster and easier and within hours the results were known and nobody protested because everything was done transparently," he said.
He urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to start educating prospective voters so that the electronic voting machine could be used in future elections.
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I believe that Alhaji Galadima did not observe officials of the electoral body tampering with results. Did he read the findings by the election tribunal on why votes from some areas in Edo state were cancelled? He should therefore start by educating his fellow members of INEC on the need to uphold the principle of justice and fair play at all times in matters related to elections. He should also tell us the estimated cost of e-voting in Nigeria. Is e-voting possible in a country with severe power shortage? What happens when PHCN (or whatever it may choose to answer) plays its usual music? Will these machines be locally produced or imported into the country? If the latter, do we have the necessary manpower for immediate resolution of problems that may arise during the exercise? In any case, what is wrong with option A4? Is it possible to improve on it? Finally, I wish to remind Alhaji Galadima that we need credible, not necessarily fast, results.
"nobody protested because everything was done transparently,"
That's not true, nobody protested because it is impossible to legally protest : with electronic voting, all (ballots, urns) is virtual, so there is no proof to present to a legal court. In addition there is no transparency
To know more, read the article written by a computer scientist, specialist of electronic voting : « Transparency in Electronic Voting : the Great Challenge » http://www.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/info/perso/permanents/enguehard/perso/IP SA_RC10_2008.pdf
Abstract: Voting must respect several criteria to be democratic. In this paper we determine whether electronic voting can simultaneously protect secrecy, be transparent, accessible and resistant to intimidation and fraud.We consider different types of e-voting ranging from Direct Recording Electronic voting systems to remote internet voting. We show that there are major contradictions between the constraints of democratic elections and the possibilities offered by computers. In particular, electronic voting appears to make massive and invisible fraud possible to achieve by small groups of people with the necessary skills. At present, it is not a realistic possibilility to design an electronic application, remote or not, that could cope with the demands of democratic elections.