Pakistan is rapidly heading for another electoral disaster. It continues to retain its archaic and unnecessary electoral list-making process that can do no better than what it did last time. While it ended up manufacturing 37 million fake voters in 2008, the results will not be much different this time around. There are at least four types of flaws that call for immediate attention. Based on the 1998 census, Pakistan’s current population should be around 190 million people. Fifty-one percent of our population is above 18 years. This means there are 97 million Pakistanis who are eligible to vote. The voters’ list released by the Election Commission of Pakistan shows only 84.4 million voters. It simply means that there are 12.6 million eligible voters who are not included in the current voters’ list. Organisations such as the Free and Fair Elections Network consider the gap to be much higher.
The voter list retains the names of those who are no longer alive. This number is close to two million, according to NADRA records, and 15 million according to many legislators who took up this issue in parliament. There is no easy way to estimate or correct those whose names appear in the electoral rolls but with a wrong polling address – another city or an incorrect location of the same city. Those whose names have not been included in the voters’ list despite their possession of national ID cards. The combined effect of these four types of errors has rendered the current voters’ list just as fake and futile as that of the 2008 elections.
Full Article: What is an error-free voters’ list? – Naeem Sadiq.
