Again, Kaduna to adopt electronic voting for LG poll

The Kaduna State Independent Electoral Commission (KADSIECOM) says the September 4 LG election will be conducted with the use of electronic voting machines.

Kaduna became the first state in the country to adopt electronic voting during its last LG poll in 2018.

Briefing journalists ahead of the 2021 exercise, Saratu Dikko-Audu, chairman of KADSIECOM, said the commission adopted electronic voting, owing to the support of Nasir el-Rufai, governor of the state.

Dikko-Audu said the commission has learned lessons from 2018 while adding that the electronic voting machines have been upgraded to prevent multiple voting and other issues.

“We pioneered the electronic voting system during our last Local Government Councils election, that was in 2018. Why that happened was because the governor of this state, Malam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, being very progressive and courageous, decided when we came on board to task us with the responsibility of deploying technology to our local government councils election,” she said.

“Initially, we thought all he meant was using the smart card reader because it had been such a success in the 2015 elections.

“But he said no, he wanted us to go the whole hog and have citizens actually vote on a machine and so we set out to develop the voting machine which we eventually presented to the public in 2018.

“Each voter’s card can only be used once, so the machine will not allow multiple voting. The voter is required to touch the logo of the party, he wants to vote for, and that choice is registered, and he can see a paper trail generated through a transparent window in the machine showing the party the voter chose.”