Election incidences must be used as a lesson

THE incidences that occurred during the current 2017 and past national elections should be used as invaluable lessons to prepare well for future national elections.
This is because the key to hosting successful, free, fair and transparent national elections in the future hinges on the preparedness of the national government and its mandated agencies.
However, it seems that the same election issues keep surfacing during consecutive national elections but no serious effort has been done to address them once and for all.
Despite the engagement of independent overseas observers in certain parts of the country, their presence isn’t enough to ensure a free, fair and transparent election because most of the issues mentioned above are underlying issues that need to be resolved during the preparatory process leading up towards an election.
So the important question to answer is: should we continue to use the current election system or should we abolish it and replace it with a new system to conduct our elections?
In trying to answer this question, many have suggested various alternative means of conducting elections like the use of the NID database system instead of the common roll among others.
I suggest that the country consider the use of electronic voting system.
Common roll data of eligible voters should be done by using both the names of people and their finger prints as well and this database will be managed by the Electoral Commission.
During elections, polling officials will carry satellite tablets similar to eftpos machines which will be connected to the central database.
An eligible voter will use his or her finger (thumb) to press a pad on the satellite tablet and a message prompt will appear telling the voter whom to vote for, for both open and regional candidates respectively.
After an eligible voter has indicated his or her first, second and third preferences for the preferred open and regional candidates respectively, he will press confirm and a message prompt will appear stating that he or she has voted successfully.
As soon as everyone has voted or the last person has voted, the system will automatically calculate and instantly display the outcome of the voting.
Very high security features will be incorporated into the technology and software making it difficult for anyone within the Electoral Commission or those outside to tamper with the technology to influence election outcomes.
We are living in an age of major technological revolution where such technology and expertise are on the market for us to buy and tailor it to suit our domestic election requirements.

Eugene Kambut
Kiunga
Western Province