The Challenges Of The Transition To E-Voting Adaptation In Nigeria
Taking Nigeria as a case study, Ahmad et al. (2015) studied the challenges affecting the transition to e-voting adaptation in the country and went on to recommend a way forward. They identified major problems affecting elections to include missing names of some registered voters, intimidation and disfranchisement of voters, multiple and under aged voting, snatching or destruction of ballot boxes, miscomputation and falsification of results. These problems having effects such as severe flawed voter lists, misuse of incumbency power, and lack of transparency; actual or perceived bias of election officials resulting to real or perceived fraud stimulate election related violence with far reaching consequence of eroding peoples' faith and confidence in democratic process.
The scenario explains the incident of increasing spate of violence including killings and maiming. They were also able to pick out the challenges affecting the traditional paper based voting to include: Difficult topographical terrain of some communities in that effective distribution of electoral materials is not only difficult but also challenging, Issues bordering around franchise as the existing voting system do not support absentee voting, Inadequate transparent mechanism in which electoral officials enjoy overdo privilege to manually collate, count and announce election results. Hence, the method is prone to danger of human error and deliberate manipulations.
The susceptibility nature of the method allows electoral officials with corrupt motives and their accomplice to easily rig election at every stage of the process unnoticed. Furthermore, the system allows for multiple voting, voting by non-eligible persons; and intimidation of voters by scaring them away from casting vote or forcing them to vote candidates against their wishes. They stated that although the e-voting system presents a better option to the traditional paper-based voting, although there are some challenges to be considered when transitioning to this method. Some of the challenges include: Absence of legal framework, Ineffective means of national identification, Inadequate database of voters, Inadequate requisite ICT infrastructure including electric power supply, Lack of participatory policy process, Inadequate trial of the technology in non-public election, Apprehension by electorates over the motives behind the proposed e-voting system, Loss of trust and confidence on the electoral officials, Digital divides, Low level computer literacy and technology phobia among the electorates, Inadequate technical and managerial capacity to handle sophisticated technology, Security and reliability of the technology, Lack of adequate information on the procedures involved in the e-voting system, and capital intensive nature of e-voting project versus cost effectiveness/value for money.
If the aforementioned challenges can be taken care of as well as practically testing the technology on non-public elections platform before the full-scale countrywide adoption, then e-voting can present a better option to the traditional paper-based voting.
