EC urges govt to provide electronic voting machines

The Election Commission has requested the Government of Nepal to make necessary arrangements for the use of electronic voting machines for the upcoming elections to the House of Representatives and the State Assembly.

In order to make the election management process quick, safe and clean, the Commission has written to the Government of Nepal through the Ministry of Home Affairs on the basis of the report received from the committee formed to study the use and management of electronic voting machine based on the provisions in the election law. In a statement issued here today, Joint Spokesperson of the Commission Surya Prasad Aryal said that if the situation is not conducive for immediate management of the electronic voting machine made in the country, it will be made available to the Commission by mid-July.

In the report submitted by the committee formed under the coordination of the joint secretary of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to study the use and management of electronic voting machine, a technical committee consisting of university professors, civil servants, government employees and independent experts was immediately formed. These include testing and resolving questions that may arise in public on the machine, improvements to the machine to be used more widely in the future, and learning from the experience of countries that have successfully implemented electronic voting machines.

The Commission has a legal provision to use electronic voting machine in the election of the President, Vice President, members of the Federal Parliament, members of the Provincial Assemblies and local level members in accordance with the Constitution and federal law. In the Constituent Assembly election of 2007 AD, the Commission used it in six constituencies and in the Constituent Assembly by-election of 2014 AD, it was successfully used in five constituencies including Bardiya, Baglung, Kathmandu and Kailali.