Why Electronic Voting Can Be A Solution To Election Manipulation.

[Exitoral]

How many Nigerians are exposed to the internet? Not quite much. Nigeria is suffering from blackout too frequently and I am pretty sure on that day, many people phones won't be charged. And again the site or app they are going to use will definitely have problems. You know how INEC do. I am 💯 sure that there will be a glitch and the party that bribed more will win. I never believed in this democracy of a thing. And I still don't believe in it. There are too many loopholes with democracy that I hate.

[Qhunman]

I believe Electronic casting of votes will reduce elections malpractices during elections.  Votes buying, changing of results or snatching of ballots boxes will be prevented and Nigerians won't have to risk their lives trying to protect their votes against votes snatchers or get killed by those paid APC happy trigger police officers.

Our leaders knows exactly what to do to ensure a smooth, transparent, free and  fair election but they wouldn't do it because they might be voted out when they don't perform well.  I believe that  Free and fair elections can be conducted in Nigeria if our leaders meant it.

[Alvin_talk]

We keep talking about politicians investing heavily on hackers, do you know how much is the budget of INEC? Don’t you think that INEC can hire the best cybersecurity experts in the world? this talk of hackers is one thing that the politicians are using to talk done on the issue of electronic voting in Nigeria.

So who appoints the INEC chairman? Of course its the incumbent president. That means the presidency (corrupt Tinibu as we all know) can appoint someone who aligns with their negative political interest and motives as the INEC chairman. This already neutralises your point, because such an INEC chairman will be the one to help rig the election electronically with part of their so called budget.

Assuming INEC in Nigeria is fully independent such that they organise and elect their leaders among themselves, then the president will have little to no control, meaning that we can be sure that if we organise an electronic voting election,  we are sure the incumbent president will not influence the chairman to interfer with the result in any way. But it is unfortunate that's not the case.

[Judith87403]

That's very good idea as it will reduce ballot snatching and thugs harassing voter's and it will help a lot as people will be free to vote whom they choose without being bribe or threatened, but I think Nigerian electoral system is something else they will never agree to this system of voting and even if they do agree I'm sure they will still device means to hack INEC sever and those at the village might not really have the access to vote as the use of this gadget isn't accessible to them.

True, if INEC employs electronic voting it will be very good because the cost of running elections will reduce in the sense that the resources that INEC spends on logistics of electoral officers will not be done again and NYSC members won't also be risking their lives during elections where they face harassment in the polling units and some of them are even killed in the process. If elections are done using electronic system, there will be irregularities but it won't be so severe as it is in physical voting. Nigeria is big enough to provide a transparent medium of casting votes during elections but just as you said, the Senate may not approve it because they know it will affect a lot of them.

[Anayochukwu]

This would have been a great idea especially for the younger generations that are fighting for change but it still won't work, what about the elderly people that has no access to Mobile phone how will they vote? There's nothing wrong with the normal way of voting and I honestly think that inec is the reason for every bad leader we have been getting and if the bad people in inec are not removed there won't be any positive changes because they decide every results and they have the power to manipulate the results to favor the people they want, we all need to put our eyes and ears more on inec and hold them accountable and put pressure on them. Electric voting isn't the solution because they will still find a way to rig the results we just need to stand together as one and watch the inec closely.

[SDS11]

Am not talking about the use of electronic machines on pulling units during an election, but a process where you can cast your vote from your place of convenience or residence by possibly by logging in into the INEC server using your electronic gadgets such as your phone or even laptop. This process will enable more transparency in the electoral system because every Nigerian will be well updated about the status of every election including the presidential election.

The server will be designed in such a way that the various political parties for that election will be included there, and when you cast your vote for a particular candidate or party you see it counting for that your candidate including the the votes of other people. This way, voters or citizens will no longer gather in pulling units, and there won't be anything like hijacking of ballot boxes or any kind of assault on voters. Furthermore, this result will be visible to every Nigerian, and the winner will be already known even before the announcement or result declaration.

What the INEC body only have to do is result pronunciation, and winner's declaration, and this way the right candidate or the citizens choice will emerge.
This will also reduce politicians giving money to citizens to vote for them because you are probably voting in your privacy.

I believe if this kind of initiative is deployed into Nigeria electoral system, the voting system or arena will be completely free, and fair .

What is your take on this?

This online voting from home will cause more problems than it will solve. Ballot box hijacking will just turn to server hijacking. How many Nigerians have smartphones, laptops, strong network or data to vote online? What about our parents for village where there is no light talk less of network? You will automatically disenfranchise millions of rural voters.

Vote buying will even be worse not reduced. If I can vote from my house, a politician can just sit in one compound collect 50 phones, give them some amount of money and make vote in front of him. At least for unit there is small secrecy but for housing voting there is no privacy at all. How will INEC know who is really behind the phone? People can steal PVC details, buy NIN use one person’s details to vote multiple times.  Even INEC chairman has said we are still struggling with IREV uploads and BVAS tackles of full internet voting.

[Tonimez]

Electronic voting is a very potentially effective approach to cubbing the menace of electoral malpractice. But the question is, can Nigeria leaders allow a working electronic voting system? Everyone knows what to do to end bad governance and malpractices but no one is ready to do it. There has been various electronic systems that were introduced but failed. The card readers and the BIVAS voting systems has been manipulated in the process either through bad network or by interrupting the voting process.

Same people who created the system will alter the system in favour of their candidates. Nigeria will work but it can only work when the people are ready. However, I still think that the electronic systems if allowed to work independent or the bad network, could solve part of the electoral malpractices we're facing now.