Corruption, Doubts Threaten e-Voting System

Unless the corrupt human chain is removed from the possible use of electronic voting system (e-voting system) for the conduct of the 2011 general election, the outcome of that election may be worse than all the elements of subjectivity that bedeviled the past 73 years of voting experience in the country, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now reveal.
Supporters of electronic voting mostly election officials and voting machines companies, had long argued that, though manipulation of such systems was possible, nobody had actually ever done so.
In reality however, the greatest security threat to e-voting system come from election insiders, not from the voting public and dubious claims of “voter fraud”.
Emmanuel Amos, chief executive officer of Progammos Software Limited said that “voting machines themselves aren’t corrupt. Corrupt human beings corrupt them. The machines can deliver whatever the manager wants from them.”
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that the hairs have been raised since Prof. Maurice Iwu, chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec), muted the possibility of the introduction of Electronic Voting System (EVS) to ensure the principle of one man, one vote.
Inec, the permanent body created by the constitution to organize Federal and state elections in Nigeria insisted that the e-voting method was rig proof.
Prof. Iwu said that the EVS is simple to operate, guarantees one man, one vote, disallows ghost voters and ensures quick and uninterrupted simultaneous transmission of election results to the centre.
He added that electronic voting system does not require any academic qualification to operate adding that all a voter needed to do was just to walk to the voting centre and press the button of the political party of his choice which can not be done more than once by the voter.
Voting machines companies also said that electronic voting can reduce election costs and increase civic participation by making the voting process more convenient.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that the commonest EVS is the Direct Recording Electronic System (DRE) where voters view ballots on a screen and make choices using an input device such as a bank of buttons or a touchscreen.
Votes are stored on a memory card, compact disc or other memory device. Election officials transport these memory devices to a centralized location for tabulation, just as they would with paper-based ballots.
Many DRE devices also have the capacity to print a paper record of ballots cast.
Critics however, maintain that the human chain was responsible for illegal voter registration, intimidation at polls, and improper vote counting and not machines.
According to them, unless the system is designed in such a way that it is independently transparent and as independently verifiable as possible, it may well be a white elephant.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek also gathered that with EVS, fraud is a major concern with e-voting.
Experts said that the possibility of fraud on a monumental scale is still present under the right circumstances (for example, a programmer who has accepted bribes) and that fraud is potentially more difficult to detect when using electronic ballots versus paper ballots.
A programmer could alter the electronic record of ballots cast and, because votes cannot be linked back to a particular voter for verification, detection of vote tampering could be impossible.
There is also the concern of transparency because without careful examination of the code, voters cannot be certain that the system is doing what it is supposed to do in the first place.
Fraud could originate with the vendors either intentionally or through a programming error, and votes could be misattributed without chance of detection.
Dr. Fabian Duru, a psychologist called for moral orientation urging electoral officials to put national interest first before their avariciousness.
He blamed the electoral officials for acts of fraud that affect vote counts by increasing the vote share of the favoured candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates, or both.
Duru warned against wholesale adoption of EVS without first putting in place the necessary legal and policy framework while urging Inec to embark on sensitization campaign to drum support for the system.