Iec Investigates Electronic Voting To Modernise South Africa's Elections

The conference, which started on Monday in Cape Town, includes speakers from a number of countries, including Estonia, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, that have already implemented e-voting systems. Their insights will inform the IEC's decision making on whether or not to incorporate e-voting into South African elections.

E-voting offers a wide range of benefits, including improved access for the elderly and the disabled and those in living in remote areas a reduction in human error in the handling of ballots and a significant reduction in the cost of running elections.

But there are potentially dangerous downsides to digitising the electoral process that could undermine the integrity of South Africa's democracy.

"The ultimate goal of digital transformation should be to ensure that queues get shorter, not longer, on voting day," said home affairs minister Leon Schreiber, who spoke at the conference about the role the implementation of a digital ID system will play in ensuring that an e-voting system will be less susceptible to identity fraud.

"The efficiency of any electronic system should be better, not worse, than the existing paper-based system. There is frankly no point in digitalising a process if it is going to be just as slow, inefficient and insecure as the manual, paper-based process that preceded it," said Schreiber.