MY PERSONAL OPINIONS ON HOW THE “ELECTRONIC VOTING OPTION” CAN BE ACHIEVABLE IN THE NIGERIAN ELECTORAL PROCESS..

It must be noted that before Electronic Voting can be achieved,, the Electoral-Act must have already made the INSTANT Electronic Transmission and INSTANT Electronic Collation of Election Results mandatory and compulsory... And that the Commission (INEC) must have already perfected the usage of the electronic transmission and collation of results, as well as the review and announcement of the official results.


In Section-41(1) of the Electoral-Act-2022, the Act made use of the Term “electronic voting machine or any other voting device for the conduct of elections”.
This means that the Electoral-Act envisages the possibility of expanding the Electoral Technologies in the nearest future to include Electronic Voting Technologies too.
This also means that the Electronic Voting Option is highly achievable and obtainable in Nigeria.

All that it would take is to amend the Electoral-Act in order to INCLUDE the “Electronic Voting Option” as one of the Options for casting the ballot.

It will not be a good idea to make “Electronic Voting” the only method of voting for all the voters.

Thus, the Section-50(1) and Section-103(5) of the Electoral-Act should be adjusted to read thus:
“Voting at an election under this Act shall either be by open secret paper ballot, or by open secret electronic voting with the use of the electronic voting machine; and both methods of voting shall be happening simultaneously at the Polling Unit”.

Like I pointed out earlier,, before the members of the National Assembly can successfully add the electronic voting option in the Electoral-Act,, the INEC must have already perfected their acts in the electronic-accreditation, electronic-transmission, and electronic-collation, and in the instant synchronization of all electoral data across all the electronic platforms for the storage and processing and display of election data on the election day.

Here below are the 5 things which the INEC must have perfected their acts in, before Nigeria can think of having electronic voting option included in the Electoral-Act.
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1. Electronic Accreditation for all voters.
The compulsory BVAS Accreditation and authentication of voters by the INEC must be made mandatory and compulsory.
(This can be considered as “Achieved” in the current electoral dispensation of Nigeria.)

2. Instant Synchronisation of the Electronic Accreditation Data for all voters.
Once anyone gets accredited, whether on the BVAS or on the Proposed Voting-Machine,, the accreditation information gets instantly synchronised on the electronic register of voters, and thus, the person cannot be able to present himself to be accredited again for voting.

3. Bimodal biometric/facial authentication of all voters.
The bimodal authentication of all the voters before voting must be made to be mandatory and compulsory.

4. Instant Electronic Transmission and Electronic Collation of results at the end of voting exercise.
(This too should also be made to be mandatory and compulsory too..)

5. Publicly viewable “Results-Dashboard” and/or “results-viewing-portal”..
There should be a properly arranged dashboard or portal where the results of all the levels of results (both the polling unit results and the collated results), and all the categories of results (including both the paper-ballots and electronic ballots) are instantly available, and where they can all be viewed separately; including both the initial electronic collations of the results, as well as the Official Reviewed Collated Results.

With these five parameters fully available and fully operational for all the voters and for all the election results, then it will be very easy to include the electronic-voting option in the Electoral-Act without much problems..

Meanwhile,, if the INEC cannot guarantee that all these five conditions can be met completely and comfortably,, then, there is no need “wishing” to have the Electronic Voting Option included in the Electoral-Act For the Nigerian System.




Nevertheless...
After the Electronic Voting Option had been included in the Electoral-Act, the Act should also make some things mandatory and compulsory, which include:

1. “That all the electronic machines and voting devices shall always be live online, and be constantly synchronised with the electronic register, and also constantly synchronised with all the necessary Collation Systems and servers throughout the whole time that the election is going on”.

2. “That the number of accredited voters and the number of votes that were cast on the machines shall be temporarily stored inside the electronic machine, and not to be made visible on the INEC’s Results-Dashboard, until the presiding officer synchronizes the data on the Electronic Machine with those of the Paper-ballot votes, and transmit the total final results to the COLLATION SYSTEM”.

3. “That the results from the polling-units (as well as all the electronically collated, and the reviewed collated results) should be well categorized on the results-dashboard in such a way that the paper-ballot votes are sorted and collated differently from the electronically cast votes”.

4. “That after announcing the final results of the election and declaring the winner, the INEC shall instantly publish on the INEC’s official website, the Electronic Versions of the Electronically-Collated Results (which were gotten from the direct electronic collation), as well as the “Reviewed Collated Results” which were gotten from the reviewing of the Electronically-Collated Results. The reviews are to be done by the INEC’s Collation Officers and Returning Officer.
The INEC shall make these two sets of results available for download in a readable format”.

Source:
https://twitter.com/OkayUmme/status/1703866321690153262

MY PERSONAL OPINIONS ON HOW THE “REMOTE ELECTRONIC VOTING WITH MOBILE DEVICES” CAN BE ACHIEVABLE IN THE NIGERIAN ELECTORAL PROCESS..

If the Electoral-Act intends to expand the “Electronic Voting Option” even further, in such a way that it can accommodate the remote voting with mobile devices,, then more security measures are required to be included in the Act.

In addition to all the five prerequisite conditions for the inclusion of the Electronic Voting Option in the Electoral-Act, the Act should also make these following conditions mandatory:

1. “That the remote voting software or Application shall always be live online, and constantly synchronised with the electronic register, and also constantly synchronised with all the necessary Collation Systems and servers throughout the moment when the user is voting”.

2. “That only ONE user can log-on to the voting software or Application on any device, and that such a user cannot be simultaneously logged-on on more than ONE device at a time. And that ONLY THE USER who is logged-on on any device can vote with that device he or she is logged-on on the election day”.

3. “That no user can log-on on the Voting software or Application on any device anywhere on the election day - once the time-window for the election on the election day had started counting”.

4. “That the identification of the user’s voter’s-card details on the election day - before the actual authentication and voting - shall ONLY be by “scanning” of the card, and Not by inputting the card’s details in the voting app for search”.

5. “That after the successful bimodal biometric/facial authentication of the remote voter, the voting software or Application shall continue to “view” the face of the user (who is now referred to as a voter) while he or she casts his or her vote, to ensure that the voter keeps his or eyes on the screen while voting, otherwise the software or Application shall prompt the voter to keep his or her eyes on the screen while voting”.

6. “That whenever the voting software or Application detects other pair (or pairs) of eyes other than those of the voter, the app should prompt the voter to suspend the voting exercise for some seconds and go to a place with sufficient privacy without exiting the voting software or Application -- so as to avoid breaching the rule of secrecy of the voting exercise”.

7. “That after the successful online voting by the user, the voting module in the voting software or Application shall automatically close, and the results of his or her casted vote and accreditation data shall get instantly transmitted to the dedicated “waiting” server which serves the particular polling-unit where he or she is registered to vote.”

8. “That the dedicated “waiting” server shall function as a temporary storage to the accreditation and voting data, which serves each polling unit (and keeps such data well secured, and away from being transmitted to the collation systems and/or to the results-dashboard), pending the time the presiding officer of the polling unit synchronizes all the data that are related to the polling-unit at the end of election, and transmit them to the Collation System”.

9. “That once a user had successfully completed his bimodal authentication for the sake of voting, the voting software or Application must ensure that he or she casts his or her votes as quickly as possible, in order to avoid unforseen circumstances; since any abrupt power outage or malfunctioning of the device after the successful authentication - which abruptly causes the voting software or Application to go offline - shall cause the voting software or Application to submit a blank/voided vote, and therefore the person cannot present himself again for accreditation and voting - even at the polling unit.
Since the electronic devices for accreditation and authentication at the polling unit would be showing that the person had already voted”.

10. “That the INEC shall configure the voting software or Application in such a way that..
immediately the results get transmitted from the polling-unit by the presiding officer, the software or Application notifies the user that the results from his or her polling unit had been transmitted”.

11. “That the results of the election at all levels shall be well categorized on the results-dashboard in such a way that the paper-ballot votes are sorted and collated differently from the electronically cast votes at the polling-units, and that they are also differently sorted from the remotely cast votes”.

12. “That after announcing the final results of the election and declaring the winner, the INEC shall instantly publish on the INEC’s official website, the Electronic Versions of the Electronically-Collated Results (which were gotten from the direct electronic collation), as well as the “Reviewed Collated Results” which were gotten from the reviewing of the Electronically-Collated Results. The reviews are to be done by the INEC’s Collation Officers and Returning Officer.
The INEC shall make these two sets of results available for download in a readable format”.

Source:
https://twitter.com/OkayUmme/status/1703879677096419716

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I am expecting some people to come and start talking about RUSSIAN HACKERS..




MEANWHILE,,
THIS WILL BE A VERY GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR THE NIGERIAN TECH EXPERTS TO INVEST HEAVILY IN AND CASH-OUT BIG TIME..

You people have started again oo.

Righthussle:
You people have started again oo.

Is It About The Russian Hackers??




See my brother...
Until we get what we want out of this whole situation,, we will never get tired of talking ooo..

So, don't ever get tired of seeing us.

Even the electronic accreditation and collation of result was bastardized by INEC because of the desire to rig the election in favour of a well known criminal.

The problem is not the relevant laws to deepen our electoral hence democratic processes, but the firmness and sincerity of our regulatory institutions. Imagine a man like Mahamod Yakubu still seating as INEC chairman after the grand electoral heist of 25th February 2023.

Racoon:
Even the electronic accreditation and collation of result was bastardized by INEC because of the desire to rig the election in favour of a well known criminal.

The problem is not the relevant laws to deepen our electoral processes, but the firmness and sincerity of our regulatory institutions

The problem is still with the Electoral-Act..
Many people pointed it out earlier...
(That the Electoral-Act depended so much on the INEC..)

So, the Electoral-Act should be thoroughly amended in such a way that the INEC will only have to do it's work as stipulated for them inside the Act,, and not given any space inside the Act to have any FREE HAND..

Y can’t we vote with our phone. Even if you have 10 numbers y, can’t one be accredited and use to vote.

KnowAll:
Y can’t we vote with our phone. Even if you have 10 numbers y, can’t one be accredited and use to vote.

I wrote extensively about this inside the post..
Read the post.

I have seen it. I think a test run should be rolled out in on coming elections.

KnowAll:
I have seen it. I think a test run should be rolled out in on coming elections.

As soon as possible oo..

Both the “Remote Voting Option” and the “Electronic Voting Option” at the Polling Units..

Even if they have to test-run it by conducting a MOCK ELECTION,, I definitely will participate in it

Ok

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BluntCrazeMan:



As soon as possible oo..

Both the “Remote Voting Option” and the “Electronic Voting Option” at the Polling Units..

Even if they have to test-run it by conducting a MOCK ELECTION,, I definitely will participate in it

For me I would suggest full electronic voting, it will reduce rigging to the lowest level and still be very effective, cheaper and safer, everybody will know result before announcement and sabotage will be very low because the election can take place for a full month or more....