via Africa’s virgin gateway to e-voting: Whither Zimbabwe? December 5, 2014
FOLLOWING a number of disputed elections since 2000, Zimbabweans are in constant search of a voting system that can improve voter registration, voter identification, voting and vote counting in order to improve the integrity, credibility, acceptability and legitimacy of the election process.
Can electronic voting be a durable solution to Zimbabwe’s tainted electoral process? If yes, what process can be followed before the next general elections in 2018? If not, why? This paper adds to national debate using evidence from Africa’s first electronic voting adopted by Namibia in the Presidential and National Assembly elections held on November 28, 2014. In particular, the brief explains and analyses the e-voting and recommends a possible path for Zimbabwe.
Namibia held Africa’s first electronic voting on November 28 2014 in a peaceful political environment. Sixteen political parties contested to fill 96 seats in the National Assembly and nine candidates for President.
There were 1 241 194 registered voters. It was fascinating that 45,5% of the electorate that is 564 706 out of 1 241 194 registered voters were those born after 1982. Within this configuration, 264 982 voters were born after Namibia’s independence on March 21 1990.
This meant that young people were going to be key to the outcome of the election. The election was run by the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN). There were 1 255 fixed polling stations and 2 711 mobile ones. Preliminary results showed that the ruling South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) was going to win the elections with more than two thirds majority thus extending its 24 year rule.
Another significant feature is that the election signified a transition from the incumbent President Hifikepunye Pohamba to Hage Geingob which can be a subject for another debate.
How did the system work?
In this election, Namibia dealt away with the paper trail. Voters found a grey electronic device, the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), with pictures and logos of the candidates and parties with a green button next to each one.
The voter had to press buttons in order to vote. A voter would first press the green button corresponding to a candidate or party of choice then press the red button to confirm the vote.
A beep sound from the EVM signalled to the voter that the vote had been recorded. If a voter made a mistake and pressed the green button next to a “wrong” candidate or party, there was a chance to correct the mistake by pressing the green button again to release that choice and start again. However, if the red button was pressed the vote could not be changed.
In this era, a pencil drawn X would no longer mark a voter’s support.
The EVM is a stand-alone machine of two inter-connected components. It cannot be accessed via any other means and it does not transmit any signal or connect to any type of network.
The system software that operates the EVM is stored on a chip which is Read Only Memory (ROM) which is hardwired on the motherboard at manufacturing and is done in a fully automated plant.
No one, not even the manufacturer can change or tamper with the system after manufacturing.
What are the advantages of the new system?
Based on our discussions with key informants, review of media, civil society and government reports the following seven were the main advantages cited.
EVMs make voting easier and more efficient
EVMs are more cost effective saving on financial resources, paper and time. For example, ECN elections director Paul Isaak explained that printing ballots cost $1,81 million, but with the EVM only $181 000 was spent on such paper.
- EVMs are easy and simple to use. Even the illiterate could use them. One would need to press two buttons to vote.
- EVMs allow for instant election results
- EVMs do not provide for spoilt ballot papers
- The blind and visually impaired could vote without assistance. A Braille signage was installed on the EVM
- EVMs are tamper proof
Despite the advantages cited above, there were also fears raised from various stakeholders as articulated below.
What were the fears?
There were fears that the EVM could be used for voter fraud without use of verifiable paper trail. In fact, there was an application in the Namibian High Court on the eve of the elections to have the Presidential and National Assembly elections postponed to February 2015.
The application was brought by August Maletzky on behalf of the African Labour and Human Rights Centre, the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP) and the Workers Revolutionary Party. However, judge Miller dismissed the application in its entirety mainly because there was no evidence to back the vote fraud fears.
For now we interrogate some of the fears, challenges and discuss the possible remedies. Let us emphasise that though the fears were quite reasonable, it was the lack of convincing evidence that undermines the weight of the allegations.
First, there was fear that without a verifiable paper trail it was going to be difficult to conduct a recount in the case of a dispute. However, according to experts on the EVM, in case of a dispute the control unity can be connected to a printer and the votes are printed out. In addition, the court can order the data to be retrieved in case of a dispute and allow for verification and re-counting.
Second, there were fears of ballot stuffing. In order to mitigate for this, a pre-poll test was conducted an hour before the election in the presence of observers, election agents and accredited media to ensure that the EVM showed zero votes before the actual polling in order to eliminate possibilities of ballot stuffing.
Third, critics argued that the EVM system provided an opportunity for double voting. The ECN used hand held voter verification devices at all polling stations to verify and authenticate all voters before they voted.
The polling officers also used ultraviolet light to detect any traces of the indelible ink by the ultraviolet light controller.
Fourth, critics alleged that the EVM could be tampered with and allow for vote rigging. There were fears around the security system.
The arguments in court by Sisa Namandje who represented the state and the Election Watch provided a compelling argument as to why it was impossible to tamper with the EVM.
We are not entirely ruling out the possibility of tampering, but based on the evidence available to date, there have not been compelling arguments to counter this.
Why one cannot tamper with EVM?
Techno-glitches
However, the EVM system was not without flaws in the actual implementation. Preliminary observations showed some glitches associated with human, operational and technological errors as confirmed by ECN.
The question is whether such glitches were serious enough to discredit e voting as a system for Namibia and possibly for Africa? In our view and based on the evidence at hand, the scale of technological glitches was not big enough to out rightly discredit the entire e-voting system as sensationalised by some candidates and members of the media. We acknowledge and outline some of the glitches below.
A few polling officers had difficulty in operating voter verification devices. Some of the machines were freezing and others were broken. Some of the verification scanners were down and it took hours to have them repaired by the technical team.
For ex-ample, Swapo’s Presidential candidate found the scanners were not working at Katutura community hall. Another major challenge was with the operation of the EVMs. There were incidences of both polling officers and voters pressing wrong buttons on the EVM. This was due to limited training and voter education. Some of the buttons on the EVMs were masked yet the rule was that they were supposed to be unmasked. Time setting of the EVMs was difficult for operators in the pre-poll test and some did not reset the machines after the pre-poll test. In some cases, the EVM was not making a beep sound to confirm the vote.
The DTA presidential candidate McHenry Venaani experienced this and was not sure whether his vote was counted or not. However, the ECN had a team of technical and support field staff that tried to assist.
The human, operational and technological errors discussed above resulted in some problems. For example, the EVM was meant to make voting faster and reduce queues. Even though this was the case in some areas that we observed in the Zambezi region, this was not the trend nationally.
There were long queues in other parts of the country, stretching to hundreds of metres even after 9pm. The voting time was 7am to 9pm, but those in the queue after 9pm were allowed to vote. One could see queues in the early hours of Saturday morning.
It led to frustration among voters and to some parties to entirely discredit the e-voting system and seek to delegitimise the election. Nevertheless, whilst acknowledging the problems, the evidence to date were that Namibia passed the line and lessons for improvement can be drawn for other African countries.
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