Elections Commission (EC) has announced today that electronic voting will not be available in the Local Council Elections. EC had previously planned to introduce electronic voting in this election.
Commission member Ahmed Akram said today that the decision to use electronic voting in the Local Council Election was reversed to honor the wishes of the political parties who were against it.
While the decision has been reversed, EC has previously said that their work will not be to introduce e-voting in all the regions of Maldives at the same time. EC's plan is to introduce the e-voting machines to one region at a time, and that it will start with a total of three machines in three areas of the Maldives.
The previous plan was to use e-voting machines only to count votes. While two separate machines are used for this, one machine would be attached to the vote box itself. The other machine is used separately. While looking at the voting process itself, it would continue the same as now without any changes.
While the European Union has expressed concern at the introduction of e-voting, the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has also passed a rule not to take part in any area of the Maldives where e-voting will be used.
Elections Commission has also previously reversed the decision to not hold voting for the Local Council Elections abroad.
