Need Of Electoral Reforms In Pakistan

Poor electoral reforms totally show the sorry state of Pakistan. Our country is in massive need to derive some positive and electoral reforms. These rigging issues will sooner go to be disappeared if our electoral reform makers will be able to set an agenda for their election process.

What can be the possible solutions to have Electoral Reforms in Pakistan?

Constructive and beneficial debate and experimentation should be carried on so that agenda can be set for the new electoral reforms. Without experimentation. nothing can be done in the area of electoral reforms.

  • Experts should be able to come up with innovations in the voting process so that they might be able to prevent further controversies in the upcoming elections.
  • Pakistani government should introduce technological solutions. The idea of introducing biometric verification, launching electronic voting can be carried to have a better election and voting process.
  • Using machines like that of silver bullets can for sure make elections fair and transparent in Pakistan.
  • Nadra has contributed to give data for biometric verification along with `security checks` in place. This attempt will be enabling them to verify all of the voters offline during the process of polling.

Response on Biometric verification by the observers

As we know that Biometric verification has been tried at some of the polling stations last year. This experiment was done during the by-poll in Haripur. But according to the observers, this Biometric verification exercise did not at all go well. During this Biometric verification, irregularities were also reported. According to the experts, just one by-poll election is not at all sufficient to give judgement on this particular technology. It is assured that Biometric verification can improve electoral transparency. But the implementation of this technology should be done in a smoother manner.

Is Offline verification one of the possible solutions to have fair elections?

Yes, Offline verification is not at all foolproof. The government of Pakistan should be able to continuously test this idea. They should also be improving this verification technology to have better results.

Though to introduce technology in our electoral process is a tiring process but we should not be discouraged. Take the example of India, it has now become a mature democracy by introducing electronic voting machines. It is the need of the hour that we should enforce also electoral laws that are present already on the books. Using technological innovations and knowing how to operate them should go side by side!

Reference:

DAWN NewsPaper 07/01/2016