Rural people are more likely to support e-voting, IEC study finds

Rural people's desire to support electronic voting is higher than that of people in urban areas. This is according to a study conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), on behalf of the Electoral Commission (IEC), which is toying with the idea of introducing digital voting.

IEC deputy chief electoral officer Masego Sheburi said he found it counterintuitive because it is usually rural people who are slower to accept technology innovations.

“It might just help to have focus groups with those constituencies to understand their aspirations so that when we try to do this right, what we offer matches their expectations,” he said.

The IEC is hosting a three-day conference which started on Monday to explore the possibility of electronic voting in the country. The deputy electoral chief said it was the business of the commission to agonise about giving voters a better experience with each election.

“We need to sit and say, what is it that we could do better to enable us to create efficiencies so that we can process voters at voting stations in the shortest possible time. We've seen how with every election, there is increased contestation, the number of parties increases, independent candidates — and it would all have a direct impact on the length and complexity of the ballot paper, which [creates] a very cognitive difficulty on certain demographics of voters to find their candidate among 50 or so candidates.”

Sheburi says they grappled with whether there was a way the commission could use technology to better present the menu to voters so that they choose with confidence and on an informed basis.

He said the third leg of consideration was figuring out what can be done to safeguard the outcome of elections, seeing as though, increasingly on the continent and globally, elections get challenged.

“[It would be good] if we could find a way to improve our results handling and the speed with which we issue results. The question is if we used efficiency gains from technology, is it possible that we could drive down the costs of running the elections?”

Despite the mooted introduction of an alternate voting element, Sheburi believes the existing manual system of voting has served the country well.

“It's key benefit is that every voter leaves the station knowing that he or she made their X next to their party of choice. It is visual and tactile, and they can see the process, whereas with e-voting those things happen on programmes and machines and if there are issues of trust you can't verify. So if you have lingering doubts that your vote is recorded as you cast it, it's a challenge.”

However solid the manual system may be, it is not exempt from critique on its present challenges, he told TimesLIVE.

“A few challenges of the manual system include the increasing size and length of the ballot paper — last year for the first time we had a ballot paper that filled two columns — so in certain instances with voters who are less confident they end up either making a mark just for the sake of it because they believe they are holding up the line, or even end up making a miscast.”

Sheburi said those hurdles can be mitigated through e-voting, which will allow the electoral commission to present those options to voters in an intuitive way.

“Considering the increased penetration of the use of gadgets, it might just be easier for people to find their party on a screen than it is to find their party on a ballot paper. I am not being alarmist, but in future elections the ballot paper may go to multiple pages.”

The IEC revealed it had approached the HSRC to test the waters and commission a study because they wanted to be scientific in their approach.

That study is what shed light on the competing ideas of what the electorate believes e-voting to be.

“What is clear is that there are varied understandings of what e-voting is. For example, some people's version is to believe that it is a remote voting that takes place wherever you are, an internet-based arrangement, and those who are against it will say it does not transcend images in society of those who have access to digital means and those who do not,” he said. 

“The second version would be e-voting at a voting station where you use a machine that is not connected to anything, that way the issues of cybercrime will not arise. The good thing is that we can now narrow down the relative strengths and weaknesses of each and if the country were to continue on this path, we will know what it is that we must do.”

The deputy chief electoral officer stated that a change of this nature would require electoral legislative amendments.

“The first step will be to call for a legislative instrument that allows for controlled piloting in a number of selected voting stations. That way, you have legal scheme you can test, against what happens in practice — you can build trust among the voting public.”

He added that the country would need a successful transition to build trust and over time, introduce improved versions of e-voting.

“For example, if you have various municipal-wide by-elections in Thabazimbi, you pilot e-voting there but with a parallel process — you count both on the machines and the manual way — so that people can see the accuracy of results.”

TimesLIVE