adminTrevor Shiri Correspondent
MEDIA reports emanating from France, indicating that the French government has shelved plans to let its citizens abroad vote electronically in parliamentary elections set for June 2017 is instructive, especially now that Zimbabwe is set to go the electronic way with the introduction of Biometric Voter Registration (BVR). France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the decision on Monday, March 6 2017, citing increased threats of hacking by foreign forces, which would compromise the sanctity of the vote.
The ministry revealed that the French National Cyber Security Agency noted that there “was an extremely high risk” of cyber-attacks.
”In that light, it was decided that it would be better to take no risk that might jeopardise the legislative vote for French citizens residing abroad.”
France, in 2012, started allowing its citizens abroad to electronically vote in parliamentary elections, but not in presidential elections.
The cancellation follows claims by presidential hopeful, Emmanuel Macron’s camp, that he was being targeted by Russian media and Internet attacks from the same country.
The Russian media and the Kremlin have, however, denied the accusations.
What is the import of the foregoing fears by France? France is a developed nation, which boasts of a Gross Domestic Product of about $2,7 trillion with the technical and technological expertise and capacity to implement e-voting. But armed with all the resources, financial, technological and human, it has chickened out of cyber-based voting, yet Zimbabwe, a developing country bogged down by lack of technology, technological expertise, inadequate telecommunications infrastructure and limited energy infrastructure is impetuously rushing to go electronic.
According to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), Zimbabwe is set to roll out BVR to create a biometric electronic voters’ roll ahead of the 2018 harmonised elections.
This is the first step towards implementing an electronic BVR system in future elections. While at face value the move seems progressive, in reality, given our circumstances in terms of technological readiness, infrastructure readiness, financial readiness and the human resource base, the country does not have the capacity to ensure a foolproof BVR roll.
Zimbabwe does not have the capacity to guard against, let alone, repel cyber-attacks on the BVR roll, more so, considering that the process has foreign international bodies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) involved.
The French, who are solely in charge of their own electoral process, have dropped e-voting to guard against foreign interference, yet Zimbabwe is being stampeded by donors to go electronic. What safeguards are there to protect the process and more importantly, the people’s vote? The answer is none.
A compromised BVR roll is equal to a compromised vote and ultimately, a contested outcome.
Zimbabwe is being stampeded to implement BVR without even piloting the roll out in a by-election. Zimbabwe has a predominantly rural electorate, which resides in areas where there is insufficient electricity, if at all. What will happen if the laptops’ batteries, or the BVR kits’ batteries run out during voting?
How will the ZEC officials authenticate voters?
Going electronic has its merits, but it has monumental pitfalls, mainly characterised by foreign interference through hacking.
Any digitised electronic system is susceptible to hacking. The fears become more real when considering allegations in the US by the Democrats that Russians hacked emails in an effort to help eventual US President, Donald Trump, to win the election. Of late, WikiLeaks has released the largest batch of highly classified CIA documents, revealing sophisticated software tools used by the CIA to break into smartphones, laptops and Internet-connected television sets. The hacking of systems run by the owners of technology, despite their technological and financial prowess, is a red flag that a vulnerable country such as Zimbabwe cannot afford to ignore, especially if it compromises its sovereignty.
In East Africa, Kenya used the BVR in the 2013 elections. Reports from that country indicate that Kenya had a rushed and opaque process that was bogged down by administrative delays and conflict among election stakeholders. On election day, biometric kits malfunctioned, and so did the electronic tallying system.
Many of the classrooms that were used as polling stations lacked electricity and laptops deployed as part of the biometric kits ran out of power, just an hour after polling began. Computers took time to reboot after switching off and a server also crashed and could not be rebooted. More than 250 000 voters were turned away as scanners failed to identify them.
Similarly, in West Africa, Ghana’s 2012 Presidential elections were marred by the failure to deal with malfunctioning biometric voter identification machines on election day.
The stakes are heavily not in favour of Zimbabwe, which is needlessly rushing to implement BVR on a national scale against the backdrop of the threat of hacking, lack of a pilot project and the infrastructure pitfalls signposted above.
It would be in Zimbabwe’s best interest to pilot selected constituencies in Zimbabwe’s rural areas in 2018 parallel to the old system in preparation for full scale implementation in 2023.
The parallel pilot programme in 2018 would be used by ZEC to gauge Zimbabwe’s preparedness and in the process, avoid the pitfalls experienced in Kenya and Ghana, which led to disputed outcomes.
Online Reporter