The software companies have developed the technology, but is Egypt ready for electronic voting, asks Ahmed Kotb There is no doubt that the 25 January Revolution drew widespread attention to the new importance of technology in everyday life. According to a recent report by TechnoWireless, the number of Internet users in Egypt after the revolution, which itself is often said to have started on Facebook, increased by 1.9 million to reach a total of 23.1 million users. More and more people are realising the importance of the Internet and technology in general, and voices have been raised calling for the use of technology in the electoral process as a way of facilitating voting and ensuring better and fairer elections. The traditional method of voting, involving putting a cross on a piece of paper and placing it inside a box, can easily be faked by excluding ballot papers or adding them to favour one candidate over others, something that is believed to have taken place over the past few years. Electronic voting, on the other hand, involves voters logging on to the Internet from home or elsewhere and casting their votes electronically in just a couple of clicks. The system also avoids the nuisance of standing in line for hours on end at a polling station. "Voting via the Internet is just one form of electronic voting," said Adel Abdel-Moneim, manager of Raya Academy, a software company. Other ways of e-voting include using punch cards or optical scan cards with machines designed specifically to read them and store the data obtained, he said. A possible electronic voting system designed specifically for Egypt was outlined last week at a conference on electronic voting organised by the Egyptian Association for the Prevention of Information and Internet Crime (EAPIIC). "Citizens would go to any polling station regardless of the constituency they belong to, hand over their national identification card to a judge who would make sure of their eligibility to vote via a barcode scanner, and receive a password, which they would then enter into a computer. This would open a page showing the candidates for the constituency they belong to, in the case of parliamentary elections, thus allowing them to vote," explained Mohamed Eslam, director of the Arab Union for Electronic Voting Software. However, having a system for electronic voting does not necessarily mean that this can be implemented in the near future, since there are various obstacles that still stand in the way. "The legal and technical aspects of the electronic voting system are not ready yet," said Omar El-Sherif, an assistant to the minister of justice, who added that legislation had not been passed to control e-voting. Moreover, "it would be very difficult to use an electronic voting system in the next parliamentary elections because of the high illiteracy rates in Egypt," El-Sherif said, adding that some 11 million people in the country cannot read or write and do not know how to deal with technological devices. Nevertheless, Abdel-Moneim believes that this problem could be solved if civil-society organisations decided to help with public- awareness campaigns designed to educate citizens from all walks of life about how to vote electronically. Volunteers inside polling stations could also guide voters and help them to cast their votes, he said. Another problem regards ensuring that the electronic voting database is secure. "The secure use of computers and the Internet in Egypt is not as common as it could be," Abdel-Moneim noted. "This means that many people may be using counterfeit software, making them an easy target for computer hackers who might use their personal information and direct their vote to a different candidate, for example," he added. There was a need for a system that would secure votes that had been cast and prevent break-ins to the database, he said, adding that "Raya Academy is one of the few companies in Egypt that can perform penetration tests on any electronic system, recommending actions to increase the level of security to make sure it cannot be hacked." For his part, Eslam said his company had also developed a system that could ensure maximum security in voting. "We have signed a contract with Google to supply us with its unique security services, and we also use an encryption system used by military institutions in many countries," he said. If the system is hacked despite such protections, this is flagged up and is easily dealt with. "If the total number of voters in a certain constituency is 50,000, for instance, and a certain candidate nevertheless gets 55,000 votes, then we will know that the database has been hacked and start to sort it out immediately," Eslam said. Electronic voting programmes are ready to be implemented, especially since a national identification number database has already been developed that will ensure that only those eligible to vote in fact do so and Egyptians resident abroad are able to exercise their constitutional rights. The only thing that now stands between the country and the introduction of electronic voting is the necessary legislation.
