ELECTRONIC Voting (also known as E-Voting) is casting one's vote using electronic means to either aid or take care of the chores of casting and counting votes.
In general, there are two main types of e-Voting:
n E-Voting which is physically supervised by representatives of governmental or independent electoral authorities (e.g. electronic voting machines located at polling stations);
n Remote e-voting via the internet (also called i-voting) where the voter votes at home or without going to a polling station.
The government is considering introducing electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the parliamentary elections due in early 2019. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced this in the Parliament, which is another project under Vision 2021 for a "Digital Bangladesh".
In response to an MP's question, she said, "The plan to introduce e-voting in the next parliamentary election can be taken into consideration in order to further ensure the people's voting rights in accordance with all existing laws for free, fair and impartial elections."
On the other hand, the BNP has criticised the proposal, saying the use of EVMs would open gates to "Digital Corruption".
Every new proposal always faces a lot of criticism and it takes time to be accepted by the common people. Legally EVMs are used by many counties like Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Peru, Russia, the United States of America, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Then why not in Bangladesh, where everyday we talk about bringing changes? Keeping the different features of EVM in mind, such as: vulnerability to hacking, easy for the disabled voters, voter verified paper audit trials, accuracy of capturing voters' intent, political ties of manufacturers, secure storage of cast votes, malicious software programming, physical security of machines, susceptibility to fraud and so on, EVM can change our mindset and make us accept e-Voting in Bangladesh.
Rabeya Ahmed
East West University
A/2, Jahurul Islam City Gate, 1212 Aftab Nagar Main Rd, Dhaka, Bangladesh
[email protected]
