Cozmo opposes online voter registration proposal

WE must never entertain the idea of online voter registration because we have not put measures in place to ensure that this becomes a success and could lead to rigging, National Revolution Party (NRP) leader Cozmo Mumba has charged.

The Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) previously said it was exploring ways of establishing an online voter registration system ahead of the 2021 general elections.

ECZ Chairperson Justice Esau Chulu said the commission recorgnised that majority of voters in the next election will be young people who are technologically minded and that the commission wanted to reach them together with those with limited time to visit voter registration centres.

But speaking to the Daily Nation yesterday, Dr. Mumba said the commission should never entertain the idea of embarking on online voter registration without putting in place effective systems that will not compromise the 2021 elections as that could be a platform for rigging elections.

He said in their current form, the ECZ and the Zambia Information and Communications Technology (ZCTA) were incompetent to embark on such an ambitious undertaking.

He said for the sake of not plunging the country into chaos after the 2021 elections as a result of such lacklustre programmes, the ECZ should continue with the old format.

He said both ECZ and ZICTA could not be trusted to deliver a credible online registration of voters without creating a problem during voting because they had proved to be incompetent where technology was concerned.

“Online registration of voters can be used as a platform for rigging an election and seeing how incompetent both ECZ and ZICTA are, let us forget about it until we are ready. In the previous election, one person was found allegedly tampering with data in the server room and up to now, we don’t know how far that case has gone.