President Arif Alvi has said that Pakistan could have avoided the crisis stemming from the delay in election results if electronic voting machines (EVMs) — a system strongly advocated by PTI during their tenure — were in use.

In a post on X, the president reminisced about the party’s struggle for enforcement of electronic voting machines, asking “remember our long struggle for electronic voting machines”.

“EVM had paper ballots that could be counted separately by hand (like it is being done today) BUT it also had a simple electronic calculator/counter of each vote button pressed. Totals of every candidate would have been available & printed within five minutes of closing of poll,” he said.

He added that the entire effort that included more than 50 meetings at the Presidency alone was “scuttled”.