ISLAMABAD: While all sectors were striving to digitalise their routine operations, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has not only failed to introduce the digital voting process, but has not even uploaded electoral rolls on its website despite having the ability to do so.

The experts as well as veteran politicians feel that the absence of digital voters’ lists is only adding to the high cost of contesting elections, putting minorities at a significant disadvantage. On the other hand, the members of non-Muslim communities have expressed apprehensions that maintaining statistical data on minorities’ votes was difficult, as nationwide lists are available only on paper.

A senior official of the ECP acknowledged that the move to digitise electoral rolls might help the new entrants as well as the middle-class contestants in their election strategies because it would be cheaper compared to the current system of getting photocopies from respective ECP offices.

In question to the electoral watchdog about its sluggish digitisation pace, the ECP officials said the “ECP was considering the proposal and will implement it at an appropriate time”.

Political activists said have decried that the ECP was not openly disseminating electoral rolls despite maintaining the computerised lists. Habkook Gill, former PTI MPA on a reserved seat for non-Muslims in the Punjab Assembly, said, “If voters’ data is available online, it will be accessible to everyone, even those Pakistanis who are living abroad.”

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“Therefore it will help political workers to pressurise the party leadership over certain things, such as granting tickets to any non-Muslim party workers on general seats. It will also help in the compilation of statistics about the voting strength of Hindus or Christian communities in each constituency etc.”

Interestingly, the ECP has maintained the computerised lists of voters and Section 23 (2) of the Election Act 2017 also directs it to make arrangements for the computerisation of the electoral rolls. Similarly, as per Section 79 of the same law, the ECP is bound to provide a PDF copy of the lists to candidates in a USB or any other tamper-proof format.

Former Hyderabad Press Club president Jai Parkash said the ECP did not upload the electoral rolls on its website because the election watchdog “charges candidates or anyone for these lists”.

“On the other hand, if the complete nationwide lists are available it will ease the overall election process and technology will eventually benefit mid-tier contestants, including women and the members of the non-Muslim communities, who have limited resources.”

Similarly, PPP leader Farhatullah Babar supported this point of view and said there was no reason for the ECP not to upload the digitised lists in this era of technology.

He added that digital lists would be significantly beneficial for the political workers in remote constituencies and would also minimise the role of “some traditional middlemen class” in politics, who have become an essential part of election campaigns and voting process.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2023