From identity to empowerment

The participation of voters in large numbers in the recent elections has set a new precedent in Pakistan’s electoral history. Both media and technology played a leading role in restoring people’s faith in the democratic process. A series of technological interventions, spurred by the principle of ‘one CNIC, one vote’, facilitated the electoral process. It is important to document these reforms so that they are understood, preserved and improved for future generations.

The May 11 polls were perhaps the most technologically intensive elections in the country’s history. Consider the main technology interventions resulting in a more transparent electoral database recording each electoral transaction with details: weeding out unverified entries, multiple registrations, exclusion errors, inclusion errors, fake identities and dead voters, and registering voters based on biometric information (ten digital fingerprints and photograph), recording who came to register them and who verified them.

Designing, developing and implementing an integrated scrutiny system – a tool for returning officers to empower them to scrutinise candidates on the basis of convictions, loan or tax default; was also done for the first time. However, the jury is out on how well the scrutiny of the candidates worked. But Nadra did try!

The most popular service developed by Nadra for the election was the 8300 SMS service which brought the details of the voters list to the voter. An unprecedented number of voters – 55 million – checked their registration details and polling stations. All these technological interventions were aimed at offering an error free, clean and digitised vote registeration system of the voters’ photograph, promoting access and empowerment of the voter, eliminating trust deficit and thus increasing turnout.

Let us consider the example of a city worker hailing from Karachi. We will analyse the stages and processes of registration he went through, starting from him getting his new identity card to getting his name on the current electoral rolls. Let us examine how Nadra and the ECP navigated him through this process.

Zeeshan, 48, currently resides in Karachi with his two daughters and a wife who is a teacher. Though originally from Islamabad, Zeeshan relocated to Karachi to join a multinational company. He was keen to vote in the elections and had applied for his electronic identity with Nadra back in 2003. Soon after Zeeshan got his ID card, Nadra digitised his information and subsequently the ECP re-verified his identity and its staff automatically registered him in the electoral rolls.

With the CNIC made a prerequisite for voter registration, Nadra’s role was mainstreamed in the electoral process. Several databases were digitised and reconciled to create a clean and credible electoral register. To begin with, data was brought forward from the 2007 electoral rolls, and digitised.

The records were then sent to Nadra for verification. After scrutiny by Nadra it was revealed that nearly 37.1 million voters were still unverified. These could have resulted from duplicate entries, fake entries, or unreported deaths. This verification exercise massively reduced the number of eligible voters from 81 million to about 44.4 million.

Zeeshan was an eligible voter in 2007 but he was missing in the 2007 voters’ list. We found numerous cases like Zeeshan and cases in which people got their identity cards after 2007. About 36 million new voters with valid identity cards and backed by biometric data were then included and the voters’ list was back to approximately 80 million. It was printed as the Draft Electoral Roll (DER) and for the first time in the history of Pakistan a massive door-to-door verification process, as opposed to enumeration, was carried out with 140,000 teachers countrywide.

Then in December 2012, an ECP officer visited Zeeshan to verify voter information. Though sceptical at first, Zeeshan soon realised that the ECP representative was actually a teacher from a nearby school who was assisting the ECP in its door-to-door verification. The officer also provided him with three different forms, in case any changes were required in the voter’s data: form 1 (alif), form 2 (bay) and form 3 (jeem). At this point, Zeeshan was allowed to modify and update personal information, his address, and to report any deaths in the family.

This was not simply a cleansing exercise for electoral rolls. It also significantly empowered the ordinary voter. For example, Zeeshan found it easier now to change his voting address from Islamabad to Karachi. And, with his eldest daughter turning 18, he also registered her vote without much trouble. He filled the two forms, and handed them over to the ECP district officer. The officer finally provided Zeeshan with a proforma to get the information about the head of family. The forms were subsequently sent to the ECP for further verification and digitisation.

After the door-to-door verification, Nadra was asked to scan and digitise 10.2 million changes, verified and supervised by the district election commissions which came up with preliminary electoral rolls (PERs) in February 2012. The PERs were displayed at 65,000 public places so that voters could verify their voting information.

After periodic advertisements in the media, Zeeshan came across an SMS-based service provided by Nadra for the ECP, where any CNIC holder could send his CNIC number to 8300 and receive information regarding his electoral area, block code and serial number on the voters’ list. By using this service, Zeeshan’s wife found out that her voting station was still in Islamabad due to some discrepancy. Zeeshan filed an application to apply for a change in the polling station for his wife at the nearest ECP office. The SMS service, by ensuring speedy access to information, undercut the role of election intermediaries who have long harassed Pakistani voters.

By April 2012, the ECP had received almost four million forms for objections and modifications. Again, these forms were scanned and digitised and after the removal of all inconsistencies, the Final Electoral Rolls (FERs) were generated by Nadra by the end of July 2012. In November 2012, Zeeshan’s younger daughter also turned 18 and hence wanted to have her vote registered. Since by then the FERs had already been published, Zeeshan visited his nearby ECP office and obtained the forms to register his younger daughter’s vote. The process took less than 15 minutes – Zeeshan’s family was now registered to vote in the general elections.

With the announcement of the date for general elections, Nadra consolidated all the previous electoral rolls with the help of updated registration information to produce the final electoral rolls of 2013. By this time, more than 55 million had verified their vote virtually by using the SMS based service mentioned earlier. On election day, Zeeshan and his family cast their vote without any problem. The presiding officer verified their details, matched their photographs on the electoral roll, took their left thumbprint on the voters’ list and allowed them to vote.

The elections are over. People have given their verdict but there are some serious complaints on the end-process over which Nadra had no control whatsoever. But to keep the sanctity of the vote intact, Nadra will help election tribunals to verify thumbprints, if a detailed enquiry is ordered for specific polling stations.

I am a firm believer that this country was made by exercising the right to choose. Thus if the sanctity of the vote is compromised it’s a national security issue! Nadra and the ECP restored the trust deficit in the electoral process resulting in a huge voter turnout on May 11. There is a huge risk that the public won’t come out to vote sans a grievance redressal system.

It may not alter the mandate the winning parties earned, and as a democratic civilised nation we must respect that; but at the same time we should not forgive those who are found to have committed electoral fraud. Making examples of such culprits should be the new definition of what we call ‘national interest’.

The writer is chairman Nadra.