Voters face hassle over EVM use

Electronic voting system encountered a wide range of complications, triggering immense sufferings to voters in the capital on Sunday.
Most of voters under Dhaka-13 constituency, where EVM (electronic voting machine) was used, were seen moving one room to another to find appropriate booths.
Those who managed to get into their respective booths struggled much to match their fingerprints that ultimately slowed down the voting process.
Having failed to vote for not finding their booths, some gloomy voters were also seen leaving the centres in frustration.
The EVM system at centre-59 in Begum Nurjahan Memorial Girls' High School went out of order after 25 minutes of voting.
But polling officers did not give any satisfactory response to the votes cast before the technical glitch.
The FE correspondents found such scenes at several polling centres under the constituency where Awami League candidate Sadek Khan contested against BNP's Abdus Salam and Jatiya Party's Shafiqul Islam.
Assistant presiding officer (APO) Abul Hasan of booth-02 of centre-89 at Badshah Faisal Institute said voters were coming with their national identity (ID) cards without knowing their actual voting place.
There were six booths in the centre. Voters came there, used their IDs and went to next booths after the machine failed to verify them, he added.
Mr Hasan said, "We said no to more than 50 per cent voters. This happened because the voters didn't have slips where voting numbers were included."
During the 15-minute stay there, the FE correspondents found seven voters denied in the same way.
"This is the fifth booth I visited at the centre to cast my vote. This machine made me suffer a lot. It should be voter-friendly," voter Mohammad Imran said.
In booth-06 of the same centre, an APO was found using his fingerprint to allow a voter to poll after the machine failed to match his fingerprint.
When asked, the officer said the machine verified him as a voter of the booth, but the problem arose when it was unable to match fingerprint.
That mismatch might happen due to some various reasons, he mentioned.
Recognising such problems, the APOs could provide such facility to 5.0 per cent valid voters, he said, citing an instruction of the Election Commission.
"There is no scope for such facility. I have no knowledge of such an instruction," said presiding officer of the centre Md Sharif Uddin.
Such "tactic" could be used for the purpose of rigging votes in some booths, a voter told this correspondent at Mohammadpur Govt College centre.
In the final hour of the voting, the APOs in most of the booths were found allowing groups of fake voters to poll in the same way.
An Ansar-VDP member in the guise of a voter wearing a blue sweeter was also seen lining up inside a booth. When asked his identity, the man left the place quickly.
Some others, in another booth of the same centre, were even seen giving votes again, although there were signs of casting vote on their fingers.
"The voting was fair until lunchtime. But things suddenly deteriorated after 1:30 pm. We've nothing to do," a polling officer said, seeking anonymity.

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