January 5, 2022
Mr Patrick Nshindano,
Chief Executive Officer,
Electoral Commission of Zambia,
Lusaka
Dear Mr Nshindano,
Re. Electronic Voting
I write to request the Electoral Commission of Zambia to seriously and urgently consider introducing electronic voting systems before the 2026 elections.
Electronic voting technology intends to speed the counting of ballots, reduce the cost of paying staff to count votes manually and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. Also in the long term, expenses are expected to decrease. Results can be reported and published faster.
And it is important to keep in mind that electronic voting isn’t online voting — it’s simply a faster way of tabulating votes.
Countries as big as Brazil and India, with huge populations and complex political systems, shifted to electronic ballot technology many years ago.
I know we have been led to distrust anything electronic in voting.
But spending some time learning about international experience might be helpful to change this perception. In India and in Brazil, results have been very positive so far. Brazil has about 150 million voters.
In the 2018 presidential election, they announced the winner only two hours and 16 minutes after the polls were closed. By that time, they had already counted 96.7 per cent of all votes, cast all over the country. Brazilians adopted electronic ballots for the first time in 1996. And no fraud has been confirmed so far. They run public tests every electoral year.
In India, voting machines have been part of the electoral process since 2001. They were used in all general and state assembly elections.
According to the Brookings Institution India Centre, the introduction of electronic voting machines reduced electoral fraud, made the electoral process more competitive in regions where the winning margins were short and led to a decline in crimes related to the election process.
And last year South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) introduced electronic voting in its local government elections. The IEC described these local government elections as the most “technologically-advanced”.
Polling place electronic systems are also being used in Pakistan, Australia, Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Namibia, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Switzerland, Panama, Venezuela, and the Philippines, among other countries.
It’s probably time to seriously consider how effective electronic balloting is in other countries, and consider adopting it here.
We have enough time to master it before the 2026 elections if we start now.
Yours faithfully,
Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party
CC. Hon Justice Essau Chulu, Chairperson of the Electoral Commission of Zambia
CC. Dr Emily Sikazwe, Vice Chairperson of the Electoral Commission of Zambia