A season of disruption
Elections under COVID-19 provide countries around the world with an exclusive problem: balancing the need for credible elections with control of the devastating public aptitude crisis created through COVID-19 and the importance of the legitimacy required to effectively govern. testing the infrastructure of democracy around the world. IDEA’s report, “COVID-19 Global Overview: Impact on Elections,” states that at least 50 countries, states and territories will have to hold elections in this pandemic. The nature of COVID-19, a communicable disease that thrives in overcrowded and near-human areas, has led to a greater defense of the digitization of the electoral procedure as an effective means of balancing public aptitude disorders with credible elections. The argument that generation can improve the credibility of elections is an old argument that is gaining popularity because generation, such as electronic voting, will restrict human contact and crowds, allowing electorat and exercising their right to vote with relatively minor physical fitness risks.
Appreciating technology
The generation has its merits: COVID-1919 is a truth that may be with us for a while, and there has to be an adjustment in the same old conduction of the elections. The April 15 elections in South Korea, held when the world closes down, is a successful style. The elections for the three hundred members of its XXI National Assembly had a participation of 66% of the 44 million registered voters. In addition to the many administrative and political adjustments required to adapt to a new environment, the Korean government’s strong democratic culture and its effectiveness in containing the virus have helped maintain the trust of voters. Technology has also played a role. To address the transparency factor in the voting process, the National Electoral Commission has broadcast the voting and compilation process live. A significant number of election documents were mailed to restrict crowds at polling stations. Social media and other technological equipment ensured good enough and timely data for citizens and voters. These processes helped build trust in the process, and this was made imaginable through an underlying positive political culture.
Other generation elements used in elections even before COVID-19 had an impact. Peter Wolf, writing on idea’s website, argued that COVID-19 could inspire more countries to experiment with online voting. Estonia, Switzerland and Norway experimented with online voting with combined results There were technical problems; Voters did not accept the process as true; and there were credible considerations about The vulnerabilities and transparency of the Internet. The truth is that generation can restrict demanding ballot processing situations and the threat of infections in polling stations. Simplifies voting and improves voter turnout when all categories of voters: others People with disabilities, sick, marginalized and who fear for their lives, the elderly, etc. , can vote anywhere. Balancing benefits and considerations will be a task for policy makers to address.
Electronic voting is another tool that is presented as useful in ensuring some long-term electoral integrity, but also mandatory in involving the early spread of COVID-19. Restricts human error or interference in vote-gathering and control and interest in West African electoral effects, In its 2019 Nigerian general election report, The Civil Society Election Situation Room highlighted the opaque nature of Nigeria’s electoral qualifications and how this lack of transparency and undue human influence enable fraud that undermines the integrity of the electoral process.
Technology has its limits
Technology is also a tool to undermine elections and create an unfair advantage, especially for headlines. When examining the many advances in technology, it is imperative to emphasize their limitations. deserve to alert us to the risks of manipulating elections with technology. Kenya’s attempt to use an electronic voting formula in 2017 led to the cancellation of presidential elections through Kenya’s Supreme Court, a novelty in Africa. Kenya’s experience, adding the torture and murder of The Head of the IT Branch of the Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission (IBEC) a few days before the election and IBEC denying its costly formula for transmitting results, shows the effect of human action on elections. As Nanjala Nyabola, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics (2018), says, “technology was meant to save an election, but instead it was used to compromise it. “
The card reader who revels in nigeria’s 2019 election is another example of technology failure. Designed as a quick fix for over-voting and survey blocking, the card reader validates the voter card against the cardholder’s biometrics. The cutting-edge formula was undermined when it was ignored or supposedly sabotaged in many places. It only created a false security of credibility that facilitated the blocking of ballot boxes for candidates.
The office and ownership of the generation used in elections is also a concern. Many West African countries cannot take over elections, from the voter registration procedure to the printing of ballots and the use of the generation, such as Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, all of which have foreign donors for their elections. In “Digital Democracy, Analog Policy,” we are informed that Kenya’s elections for 19. 2 million electorates charge more (at $28 consistent with cápit) than in India, with 214 million electorates. The cost of Liberia’s elections has risen from $13 million in 2005 to $74 million in 2017. These prices are not sustainable. In the Age of Cambridge Analytica, we deserve to distrust the source of the generation used in our elections: the intersection of corruption, the determination to win elections, foreign entities for non-social interest in our countries, and geopolitical interests is a fatal mix for the integrity of elections in Africa.
Finding the balance
Elections are at the heart of our unrest as a continent, because it is through elections that we recruit the leaders needed to protect mandatory policies and plans to improve our collective status and foreign reputation. China’s autocrats in Brazil and bringing new elements of inequality, adding biomedical discrimination, Africa wants its maximum productivity not only to thrive.
Technology can be a weapon and shield, a harsh catalyst and a paralyzing agent. We threaten to exacerbate the democratic regression that is spreading across West Africa if the underlying structural disorders are not resolved. There are some things we want to focus on. First, reform the culture of what it means to be in force and what it means to be a citizen to repair the damaged social contract between citizens and the state. elections create strong incentives to thwart democracy, and until those incentives are reduced or eliminated through constitutional and electoral reforms, the advent of the generation will not give election legitimacy.
Secondly, we will have to rebuild the spirit of social equipment through dialogue, reconciliation, schooling and social rescheduling. Unified citizenship is essential to demanding smart governance regardless of ethnic and devout considerations, and this partly comes to see a new elite consensus. , which the pandemic gives the opportunity to do.
Third, the state and the personal sector want to invest more in studies and development, population knowledge management and local generation. From Cocody in Abidjan to Yaba in Lagos, Africans are innovating with the generation and there is an opportunity to fund the creation of contextual responses to socio-political challenges.
And finally, we want to create and enforce legal frameworks to protect privacy, virtual rights, and non-public data while employing the generation for demographic control that is essential for election-taking plans and public asset budgeting and tax reforms. We need to make sure that citizens are vigilant and that our courts are independent enough to fiercely protect those rights.
As much as the generation has taken a step forward in many facets of our lives, “the generation is not a morally impartial intelligent. “Its use and deployment will reflect the intent and values of those who manufacture and use it. Technology, therefore, and smart choices like the society that deploys and plans it.
Paintings by Udo Jude Ilo and Ayisha Osori for the Open Society for West Africa Initiative (OSIWA).
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