Mobile voting for next Ash’shura elections

The Majlis Ash’shura elections will be done online using the mobile application for the first time. The Intakhib application provides a package of electoral services, including preliminary and final lists of candidates, preliminary and final lists of voters, checking registration in the electoral register, requesting candidacy for elections, following up on the automatic counting indicators for voting day.

It also provides numerical statistics that show the percentage of voting, the age and gender groups of voters, and provides a service for submitting proposals and communications to application users. The application provides the feature of the dialogue arena, which is an electronic window for community participation, expressing opinions, and allowing discussion with specialists, academics, and others according to the axes raised in the dialogue arena.

The application is distinguished by its ease of use and speed of performance. It verifies the voter’s data by reading the ID card data from both sides, as well as by means of nearfield communication (NFC). The application requires taking a personal photo of the voter to match it with the photo of the ID card, through facial fingerprint verification technology, and it also provides a high level of security and transparency for the electoral process. While the overall voting percentage was less than 40 per cent for the third term of the Municipal Council Polls, the Sultanate of Oman did embark on a major journey towards digital transformation.

Perhaps, for the first time in the region, the eligible voters cast their vote without visiting a polling booth and standing in queues for minutes not hours. It is the result of the government’s efforts to expand the scope of community participation in the decision-making process and an example of participation between the two sectors in terms of saving effort and time to find effective technical solutions.