Pakistan Elections 2008: The Rigging Options

By Farid Masood • Feb 17th, 2008 • Category: Pakistan Vote'08, Politics, Worth A Second Look • (858 views) • No Responses

The exact number of male and female voters registered with Election Commission of Pakistan cannot be seen any where on both the web sites of this department (www.ecp.gov.pk and www.elections.gov.pk). During the process of registration of voters Pakistan People’s Party late Chair-person Ms Baynazir Bhutto and chiefs of PML(N) Mian brothers has also shown great concerns over the issue.

It helps in the rigging of electoral process when there are approximate figures or not registered 100% of population attaining the age to vote.

Secondly, the voters who don’t go to cast their votes, whatever may be the reasons, as the polling process ends the number of voters havn’t casted their votes can easily be seen on the voter lists. Although the polling agents of the contesting candidates are present on the polling stations but still there is a room to cast bogus votes. This year the election commission has announced that the presiding officer shall hand over the signed and stamped results of each polling station to the agents of contesting candidates. This is not a new idea it’s a general practice in polling process for decades. Lets see how transparent is the system this year.

Third, the voters who have died after the finalization of voter lists will create a room for rigging the results. We have witnessed many incidents of un-natural deaths and the normal deaths are also not being counted.

Fourth, the rural population comprising almost 80% of Pakistan is un-educated, many of them cannot even stamp the desired symbol and cannot fold the ballot paper properly. Which endangers the authenticity of the polled vote. This also creates an option to cancel and re-poll the vote.

There are many other factors strengthening the rigging options, but the safest option in rigging the polling process is the fourth one which cannot be challenged in any court as the proof is to weak against it.

We cannot comment the rigging after completion of polling process as that system is not exposed.