On Wednesday, Prime Minister Imran Khan declared the “status quo” was against the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) to “manipulate elections by rejecting opposition ballots.”
The premier published a post regarding the first round of local government elections in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), which revealed that the number of rejected votes was more than the winning margin in the local polls.
According to the premier’s infographic, over 23,000 votes were rejected, while the winning margin was under 12,000 votes.
LG elections in KP have again shown problem of rejected votes bec of double stamping etc. The same had come out in Judicial Commission report on 2013 elections. The ability to manipulate elections through getting opp votes rejected is one of the reasons the status quo opposes EVM pic.twitter.com/ch78zPEGQw
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) February 16, 2022
The problem of rejected ballots was raised by a judicial commission appointed to investigate alleged anomalies in the 2013 elections, according to Imran, and it has come up again in the K-P LG elections.
Shibli Faraz, the Minister of Science and Technology, had previously stated that the EVMs were not built for local government elections.
Multiple panels were used in the local body elections, according to Faraz, and the machines do not yet enable multiple panels. In general elections, he added, even if 200 people are running in a single seat, only a single panel of EVMs is required.
Despite opposition parties’ and the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) objections, the government rammed the EVMs law through parliament last year.
The administration claims that these machines would provide transparent elections, while the opposition fears that EVMs could be rigged.
