It was 7:50 am when I and my husband reached the polling station with our three--month old baby. To our amazement there was a huge crowd already waiting for polling to start. Everyone was very enthusiastic and happy to be there well in time. At around 8:30am we came to know that ballot papers did not arrive at the polling station and we need to wait for another half to one hour. Instead of standing we went to other polling stations to see how the people flooded in. Each and every polling station in that area was actually crowded. Cutting to the point polling started somewhere around 11 am and the queue was quite long.
It was my first experience to vote so when I entered the polling room I could not believe the way polling was being done. Flaws were there in all steps. Each step was exhausting and making everyone more frustrated. No wonder why people hate to cast vote. Well, after standing in the queue for about three hours I was able to cast the vote.
ECP did a great job to conduct the elections in all of Pakistan. Praise for that. However, the election process is so obsolete that even a random voter can go and vote twice. I have a few suggestions for ECP which I believe if ensured can help us all to get rid of rigging to a good extent.
Ideal situation will be to have computerized and electronic voting in a polling station where the hand prints should be matched by the biometric machine and once marked no print can be repeated. That way polling will be simple and quick. I agree that it might not be easy for ECP to centralize the computerized polling as a very strong network backbone which is currently hard to establish as it will cost much. Till then I have a few suggestions to make the present polling system easy and better.
Firstly the polling rooms should have a CCTV. The whole process should be recorded if not in all the polling stations then at least in the sensitive ones. The presiding officer should be some person with more power. An army officer will be ideal, I believe. And he/she must be present during the polling process.
Two armed army personals should be deployed inside each polling room with orders to shoot on legs if anyone is found to make polling process a problem. Only 2 voters should be allowed to enter the polling room at a time. First one gets his/her verification done and left hand marked as it is done while, the second person gets the ballot paper and vote.
Too many people in the polling room make it easy for riggers to cast multiple votes. No one should be allowed inside the polling room except the polling staff, two voters and the armed army personals. If polling agents have to be inside the room they should not be allowed to interact with any of the voter or roam around in the polling rooms. Just sit and mark the names of people casting vote. Polling room should have separate entry and exit doors. It will make it easy for polling staff to manage their work.
One other big flaw was to not mark the people who have already cast the vote. The mark with the ink can be removed by commercial chemicals. So I suggest that the left thumb that was used to mark at the time of verification be dipped in ink after casting the vote. This will make the ink penetrates under the nails which cannot be removed by commercial chemicals.
Therefore, when the polling officer is verifying he/she can immediately identify any rigger or duplicate voter. Army armed guards should be standing on entry and exit doors of the polling rooms along with being deployed inside the rooms. Ballot papers should have verified serial numbers on them so that at the time of counting the serial numbers are also checked and matched. The serial numbers should be different for different constituencies so that the chance of fake ballot papers may be cut to short. The presence of a bar code on ballot paper can be even a better option.
Good stationary was also something that I observed was badly required in the pooling rooms. The ballot paper should have pinned ends so that they can be easily torn instead of workers tearing them with scales. It would save a lot of time. Having elections one by one in all provinces will shun the pressure and work load on ECP. It will help the ECP to monitor the elections well. One other way is random visit by ECP officials. They should visit any random polling station without any prior information. This will also help in keeping the staff vigilant and would check rigging.
In short, supervision of army, only one or two voters to be allowed inside at a time, camera recording of the whole day coverage, dipping the thumb in ink so that ink penetrates under the nail and visits by ECP officials can be effective in preventing rigging and casting multiple votes. Character building is required so that no matter who is the polling staff, rigging and malingering be avoided. The dilemma is not lack of education the dilemma is disloyal and insincere educated people.


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