IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

"This system will be used for municipal and European parliamentary elections," Latvia's e-government minister Ina Gulde told AFP.

"It is meant to give an extra opportunity to voters to express their opinions," she said.

The move follows what the Electoral Commission describes as ‘enormous challenges in maintaining a credible voters’ roll’. The main challenge was data capture in the field, which the new system will resolve.

The biometric voter registration system will use fingerprint scanners and digital cameras to capture the biometric data of applicants.

Election Commission chairman Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof said he hoped this would finally lay to rest all sorts of allegations.

Phantom votes are found when the number of votes reported is higher than the number of ballots cast.

EC Chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof said the commission would first have to scrutinize the system before the implementation.

“Although the system was capable of detecting multiple voting and ensuring transparency, it needed to be scrutinised before being implemented because it would be very costly,” Abdul Aziz said in a statement.

The Electoral Commission of Uganda tried biometric registration in a bid to reduce fraud. Uganda also used ICT in transmitting the results from the district returning officers to the national tallying centre. This is the kind of system that was used in Kenya during the referendum and by-elections with credible success.

But the hard nut to crack in most African elections lies in digitalising the whole processes involved so as to attain e-voting alongside e-democracy and e-government. Challenges and the dark side usually take centre stage.

He said although the system was capable of detecting multiple voting and ensuring transparency, it needed to be scrutinised before being implemented because it would be very costly.

"However, this does not mean that the existing system is no longer relevant, safe or transparent because despite allegations of multiple voting cases, none of the claims resulted in an election petition or had been brought to court so far," he said in an interview with Bernama and RTM here recently.

He said the EC would cooperate with the Home Ministry in using the system which was now being used by the ministry to verify foreigners.

"The same principle shall apply, but the system to be used on voters," he told reporters at his office, here, today.

An expert even predicts that 60 per cent of political campaigns will be done through the Internet especially social media.

Media activist Sean Ang said on Sunday night that the power of social media in the political arena must not be underestimated as witnessed during past elections.

“The rise of opposition parties in the past years is because of the Internet especially blogs.

He said the system was one of the initiatives undertaken by the EC to ensure transparency in the country's elections.

"The implementation of the biometric system will be able to counter allegations about the existence of phantom voters," he said at a meet-the-people programme at Dewan 2020, here today.

Utilising communications technology to promote more effective democratic politics is an entirely new concept. But the more recent potential of the Internet to place greater power in the hands of individual citizen vis-�-vis their political representatives, institutions of entrenched interest and even the policy decisions of global corporations has led some to suggest that e-democracy offers the prospect of an entirely new democratic paradigm.

Wie die Schweizer Bundeskanzlei am Sonntag mitgeteilt hat, sind anlässlich der eidgenössischen Volksabstimmung vom 1. Juni wieder zwei Versuche mit Internet-Wahlsystemen durchgeführt worden.

Der erste Test fand in den Gemeinden Bertschikon, Bülach und Schlieren im Kanton Zürich statt. Dort hatten 17.777 Wahlberechtigte die Möglichkeit, über das Internet ihre Stimme abzugeben. Davon machten 1.209 Personen Gebrauch. Der Test war der vierte Versuch mit Internet-Voting im Kanton Zürich.

As misgivings about online voting systems grow in the US, New Zealand’s chief electoral office intends pressing ahead with an e-voting pilot in one electorate for the 2008 general election.

Such a limited initiative will allow any mishaps or disputes over electronic votes to be contained, says the chief electoral office’s manager of electoral events, Robert Peden.

This, he said, will depend on the amendment of electoral laws, which presently do not recognise electronic voting.

Jega said contracts are being awarded for the production of a permanent voter register, which will be embedded in electronic chips on cards.