From Estonia to Zimbabwe, a multicultural call for e-voting

The urge to have free, fair and credible elections in African democracies has prompted most leaders to go out of their way to seek drastic measure to achieve that quality. The 2018 general elections in Zimbabwe are a demonstration of how desperate African states need to embrace e-voting system in their elections.

Envisaging the impasse in the elections, the transition government led by President Mnangagwa reached out to Estonia in search for help in exploring the possibility of implementing an e-voting system. This was a strategy aimed at enabling Zimbabweans who were living in the diaspora to take part in the national elections from the comfort of their destinations.

A timely solution for the diaspora

There had been a long clamour by the diaspora-based Zimbabweans demanding an opportunity to exercise their democratic right, even when they are away from their country. Desperate efforts had been done but remained futile following a conspicuous lack of political goodwill especially from the former regime of President Robert Mugabe.

This has come at a time when several Zimbabweans living in diaspora had to undertake a rigorous effort appealing to the government through law courts for the facilitation of their participation in the political processes. Although this quest would not be successful after a long struggle, the agitators never relented. After the ouster of the former president from power, the effort took a different turn as the current president reach out to Estonia for help.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa guaranteed Zimbabweans who inhabited in the US that his organization would investigate the likelihood of executing e-voting sooner rather than later as had been revealed by the state-run news office. Mnangagwa, in the interim, met Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas on the side-lines of the UNGA to examine a series of issues including how Zimbabwe could take advantage of Estonian information on e-voting.

Estonia’s online voting leadership

The agreement between the two leaders entailed that the ICT officials would be outsourced from Estonia to educate the ICT officials in Zimbabwe who would then disseminate similar education to the citizens living in the diaspora to undertake the process.

Estonia remains a hub of technology and e-voting. It has already offered guidance to help a series of countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan in curbing election irregularities during their general elections.

Estonia is in truth a pioneer with ICT advancements. In the case of Zimbabwe, the president evaluated three basic zones of collaboration with the Baltic country, e-wellbeing, e-administration, and e-voting. e-Voting is gradually becoming a solution highly sought after by developing countries to eliminate electoral fraud in their political regimes. 

E-voting will attest its value again in 2013

Image: Everystockphoto

Guiding the world through the path of automation is no easy task. Some countries have yet to learn some hard lessons with the use of archaic manual methods. In order for the nations to finally modernize their electoral systems, they need proof that e-voting is really the way to go. Last year we saw some impressive models of the effectiveness of voting technology —and the ineptitude of manual voting—, which should be enough to convince anybody of the need for electoral automation. However, it doesn’t stop there. Here are some of the aspects where e-voting will confirm its worth once again in 2013.

Reliability

Elections like the ones we saw last year in Russia, Ghana and Zimbabwe exposed the frailty of manual voting methods. With paper ballots, voters cannot be sure that their preference will be reflected in the results of the polls. Zimbabwe has a second chance to carry out a transparent electoral event now that it will be holding presidential elections this year, but since these will be carried out with manual methods, we might as well be expecting the same dreaded results that came out from last year’s internal referendum, if not worse. The recurrence of crimes such as ballot stuffing and identity theft breaks people’s trust in their electoral institutions. E-voting eliminates these problems easily. 

Speed

Elections need their results to be released to the public immediately after the closure of polling stations. The longer the announcement of final outcomes is delayed, the more the voters are prone to suspect their fairness. The chaos that took over the elections in Honduras should serve as a cautionary tale for other countries, as the final numbers for their November 18 primary elections were not known yet by the end of that month. This failure to deliver results on time could be immediately linked with corruption, which is unacceptable. Electoral technology does not allow for these inexplicable lags, as final results can be made public a few hours after closing the election. 

Security

Bringing back the Russian example, it is incredibly easy to breach security in manual elections. The implementation of transparent ballot boxes and more than 180,000 security web cameras did nothing to prevent the blatant occurrence of carousel voting and ballot stuffing during the March 2012 presidential elections. It becomes obvious then that any effort to eradicate electoral corruption paired with the use of manual methods is destined to fail.

Auditability 

When it comes to set an example about how audits can guarantee transparency to an electoral process, no country comes better than Venezuela. During last year’s Presidential election more than 16 audits certified the correct performance of the system before and after the election: from the voting machines, electronic ballots, and the biometric voter authentication system, to the transmission and totalization of the results. 

Accuracy 

For a voting system, accuracy is essential during the phases of voting, counting and transmission of results, so that the intention of every voter is respected and taken into account. Last year, Mongolians had the chance to employ an e-voting system that promised to be fast and reliable. However, the use of the Precinct-Count Optical Scanners (PCOS) developed by Dominion registered major inconsistencies between the electronic results in some precincts and the audits carried throughout, casting doubts about the credibility of the results.

2013 brings a new set of chances for electronic voting to attest its superiority over the dated and even dangerous manual voting methods. We hope to see more nations choose to successfully automate their elections in order to preserve the reliability, speed, accuracy, auditability and security of their electoral events.

Irregularities in Zimbabwe expose the vulnerabilities of manual voting systems

This video is a vivid testimony of the numerous problems manual voting often encounters. The picturesque scene depicts an election official communicating voters that they had run out of ballots, and if voting were to be resumed, it would be done by reusing those already cast. Astonished voters expressed their anger, frustration, and determination to vote. 

Incidents such as this one at the local Zanu-PF elections sparked fears of even worse irregularities to come during the future presidential elections to be held this year or next. The worst part is that this was not an isolated incident. In other regions of the country, potential voters were screened for their political affiliation before they were allowed to register to vote.

Zimbabwe is yet another clear example of the need to transition from manual into an integral electronic voting solution. A fully automated and auditable electronic voting system, which includes biometric identification to access the precinct and activate the voting session, can eliminate these types of inconveniences and provide the levels of transparency modern democracies deserve. 

In a world where all the conditions to guarantee the success of an electoral process can be perfectly covered if the right system and provider are selected, “Not enough paper ballots” is an unacceptable excuse for any electoral authority. It’s their duty to provide an electoral kit that covers all citizens expected to exert their right to suffrage.