Pakistan elections 2024: Officials raise eyebrows over election commission app, allege possible poll result manipulation

With just a few days left before Pakistan goes to poll, the election commission’s official app which has been designed to collate results swiftly has come under fire over concerns of manipulation of the software to impact the outcome of the polls. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) prepared the Election Management System (EMS) app for transmission of results from each polling station to a centralised system where tabulation of all results would be completed by the Returning Offices, who are in charge of preparing and releasing the result of each constituency. The poll body has decided to use the app on February 8 after announcing that a countrywide test run of the system has been successful. However, Abdul Qadir Mashori, the Qambar assistant commissioner (AC) and Returning Officer (RO) for National Assembly seat NA-197 (Qambar-Shahdadkot-II); and Usman Khaskheli, the Bakrani AC and RO for PS-12 have flagged concerns following a second trial of the app. The two officials wrote a letter to their superiors, stating that the data regarding duties assigned to polling officials were uploaded to the EMS, which was later found missing. “This weakness of [the] system has created many issues and also raises [a] question mark on the reliability and validity of the software,” the official said. The ECP through a letter addressed to all four provincial election commissioners issued standard operating procedures and guidelines to hold a mock exercise of EMS on January 26, according to a report by the Dawn newspaper. With inputs from PTI