Staff Reporter :
The Election Commission (EC) is in a plan to ensuring the voting rights of Bangladeshi expatriates with three alternative methods- a time-bound postal ballot system, an online voting mechanism, and proxy voting.
If all procedural hurdles can be overcome, the commission anticipates implementing proxy voting on a broader scale while testing the other two methods on a trial basis.
Election Commissioner AbulFazalMd Sanaullah outlined the plans while speaking at the EC headquarters on Tuesday. The initiative follows Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus’s December 16 address, in which he emphasized the necessity of ensuring voting rights for Bangladeshis living abroad.
Based on this directive, the EC formed a committee to develop feasible solutions, consulting with postal services, domestic and international agencies, and reviewing recommendations from the Reform Commission before finalizing their proposal.
The existing postal ballot system is ineffective, prompting the committee to propose an improved, time-sensitive version. However, even with refinements, it remains an open question whether a reworked postal system would be practical.
The second option, online voting, has gained some traction globally but remains controversial due to security concerns.
“We’ve studied four countries-the United States, the Philippines, Estonia, and Mexico-where variations of online voting have been tested,” Sanaullah said.
“India and Pakistan have also experimented with pilot programs, but UNDP cautions that many attempts at online voting have failed, leading governments to revert to traditional methods,” he added.
The third option, proxy voting, is by far the most ambitious. Under this system, an authorized representative in Bangladesh would cast a vote on behalf of an expatriate.
“Our key considerations were voter identity verification, ballot secrecy and security, auditability, cost-effectiveness, and universal accessibility for all expatriates,” the election commissioner explained.
“Taking these factors into account, the committee has recommended postal and online voting for trial runs but concluded that if we truly want to meet expectations for the next election, proxy voting must be introduced,” he said.
However, proxy voting is already practiced in several countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, while India restricts it to members of the armed forces.
