How digital voting will work in next election

Rwandan voters will be able to cast their ballot for the next president online in 2017, officials of the National Electoral Commission have said. The Rwf500 million e-voting project is designed to better serve Rwandans who live abroad, said Mike Shema, ICT director at the commission. The e-voting system, which will be tested during the March 2016 municipal elections for deployment in September 2017, will send different codes to a registered voter’s email and mobile. They must login in to the electoral commission website within two or three hours of receiving the messages and input both codes to vote. “We need to make it secure and friendly,” Shema said. Election observers and Rwandan ambassadors suggested last year that online registration and voting would make it easier for Rwandans who live overseas to participate in the electoral process. In 2013, only 38,000 Rwandans abroad were registered to vote in the parliamentary election. Shema said he thinks they could register 100,000 Rwandans abroad for the next election with online voter registration, which was launched in March 2013. “There are many Rwandese abroad and our embassies are very small and not in many countries,” Shema said. In geographically large countries where Rwanda only has one embassy, such as Canada, it can be very difficult for the Diaspora to vote. Schema also said there are many countries where Rwandese live but the government does not maintain an embassy, such as smaller states in Africa. The National Electoral Commission has been working with Tigersoft since September 2013 to develop online voting software. Schema said it has been built and they are currently analysing and reviewing the platform to ensure that is user-friendly and performs all the necessary functions. Schema said he is not particularly concerned about the technological risks of voting online, such as corrupted or missing ballots. He said there would be three to four network servers ready to go and anti-virus software in place for 2017. Some members of the Diaspora aren’t too worried about spoiled votes either. Egide Karuranga, a Rwandan university professor living in Canada, said he believes online voting would be secure. “So far as we can transfer millions of dollars online, transferring a vote shouldn’t be a problem technically nor culturally,” Karuranga said. But Schema said there would need to be some cultural education on online voting before 2017. “The population must understand how to vote,” Schema said. “All political parties must understand why we’re using the e-voting,” he added. Schema said it was important for political parties to support online voting to ensure the process is respected. He also said the electoral commission would like to see the law changed for future elections to allow for advance voting. Currently, Rwandans can only vote on the day of the election. It would be easier for people living abroad to cast a ballot if that had a little more time to do it, Schema said. But despite all the promising new technology, some Rwandese abroad say the old system worked just fine — even if it involved a long trip to the embassy. “As Rwandans living in Montreal, many of us want to take part in the electoral process,” said Frederic Mugwaneza, who handles communications for Diaspora Rwanda Montreal in Canada. “We are able to do so through Rwanda’s High Commission in Ottawa in the last presidential election in 2010,” Mugwaneza said.