Now, Computers Will Count Votes
Tuesday, 13 September 2005, 12:30
Dharamshala: The Tibetan Election Commission may lack in the hardware for electronic voting, but not in the software for counting votes.
The fact was brought home to the standing committee of the Assembly of the Tibetan People’s Deputies on Friday last, when the election commissioners presented a visual simulation of the planned computer counting of votes.
 Dr. Trikha Khenrab giving the presentation |
In elections thus far, the Local Election Commissionsâ€â€ÂÂ53 in India, Nepal and Bhutan, in addition to those in Europe and North Americaâ€â€ÂÂwould bundle up all the ballot boxes and parcel them to the Election Commission (EC) here.
In what is often said to be “a tall order”, the hand counting of votes by the officials of the EC, amid a cohort of independent observers comprising deputies of the Assembly and executives of NGOs, would take months.
Changes were introduced during the elections of the incumbent 13th Assembly in 2001, as the Local Election Commissions then began to count votes cast in their
own areas and send only a top down gazette of nominees to the EC.
However, the manual collation, screening and aggregation of the voting results from various places, which usually lasts for weeks, had its own list of drawbacks.
 (from left) Chairman of the Assembly, Vice-chair of the Assembly and the Chief Election Commissioner |
One further reform, therefore, planned for this year’s elections, is the computer counting of votes.
The introduction of computers obviates the awful amount of paper works needed in adding up the votes secured by each and every candidate nominated in the polls, along with a reduced margin for error in addition, says Dr. Trikha Khenrab, one of the two election commissioners.
“Besides, the vote counting will now only be a matter of days, rather than weeks.”
(www.tibet.net is the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration.)
