India: Election Commission gears up for upcoming electronic voting machine ‘challenge’ | The Financial Express

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and BSP supremo Mayawati had alleged that EVMs were tampered during recently concluded assembly elections. The controversy had rocked Parliament and EC had reportedly challenged political parties to hack the EVMs. Now, the Election Commission is framing guidelines, according to The Indian Express report. According to the report, EC is considering a proposal to allow political parties and their leaders to hack an EVM of their choice. It has been learned CM Kejriwal or Mayawati can pick up an EVM from the strong rooms in Punjab or Uttar Pradesh and try to prove the charge. But EC will not allow challengers to take the machines out of the EC building premises.

Voting Blogs: Can Lebanon’s sectarian elite agree on an electoral law? | openDemocracy

Given Lebanon’s tenuous political and sectarian balance, no wonder that the choice of an electoral system is among the most contentious topics. After all, it is the electoral system that determines how votes are translated into seats and therefore, how the sectarian/political elite predetermine their shares. Lebanon’s electoral laws have been amended several times since the country’s independence in 1943. The last time was in 2008 as part of a political settlement, the Doha Agreement, following a deep political crisis. Yet, all of Lebanon’s postwar electoral laws are based on the majoritarian “Block Vote” system and the same deficiencies persist, such as malapportionment, gerrymandering, the lack of pre-printed ballots, a flaw-ridden counting process, along with other grave defects in the administrative aspect of the process.