Egypt's Shura Council parliamentarians approved on Thursday the usage of electronic voting in parliamentary elections.

Omar al-Sherif, representative of the Ministry of Justice, said that electronic voting could be hacked while MP Essam al-Erian said that some countries such as India use a mixture of both electronic and in-person voting.

MP Tharwat Nafea said that as an international electronics expert electronic voting is completely secure, adding that he helped implement it at the NATO and in North Africa, the Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported.

Nafea criticised the suggestion of some parliamentarians to use the term "automated voting" instead of "electronic voting", explaining that automated voting is using a specific machine for voting while electronic voting includes various electronic media.

MP Gamal Heshmat said that this has already been used in the recent Coptic Church elections.