Electronic Voting is a form of voting in which voters make their selections with the aid of a computer.
In Nigeria, Electronic Voting can reduce election fraud, and provide better Integrity to the whole electoral process. Although, such possibility could be challenged by the intervention of seasoned hackers.
Election Fraud Reduction
Election fraud, also known as Electoral fraud, has been an impediment to the conduct of free and fair elections in Nigeria. However, with the introduction of electronic voting, at least the issue of ballot snatching will be eliminated.
For Election fraud to be dismissed in electronic voting, much security need to be installed to forestall hackers and those who have intention to initiate fraud in the elections.
Cost-effective
Electronic voting will help reduce the expenses involved in the setting up of polling stations, which saves money in printing and mailing the paper ballot.
It will also reduce the expenses on the manpower, and also services rendered by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) at the polling stations.
Convenience
Electronic voting reduces the stress associated with physical ballots. The voting system can avail Nigerians the comfort of voting from their own place at their own time.
Nigerians who are out of the country can special mail ballot to send their votes.
High Turnout
More Nigerians will be interested in Voting due to the ease and convenience of the process. As well, Nigerian youths should be more inclined to vote due to their flair for technology.
Despite the fact that electronic voting has these wonderful benefits, it can’t be overstated that, as with any voting system, certain issues need to be considered before implementation.
In Nigeria Today, a big hindrance to the full implementation of electronic voting is security. There are other aspects besides security. Some of them are forcibility; vote selling, vote solicitation, registration etc.
Essentially, hackers can hack the computers terminals and manipulate the votes before they reach the back-office server, as there are so many kinds of hacker programs available, with some of them being malicious payload and delivery mechanism.
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