I think both Jon Chait and Matt Yglesias make characteristically strong arguments in debating the wisdom of getting involved in Libya. I’m glad I’m not a policymaker right now because I have very mixed emotions about this. On one hand, I share the worries, well expressed by Jeffrey Goldberg, about what happens after we become committed. And another […]
Category Archives: Middle East
Egypt will not use automated voting system for next election
Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which is apparently in Smart Village, a PPP town on the outskirts of Cairo.
Al Ahram is now reporting that Egypt will not use an electronic voting system for the upcoming elections.
Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Maged Othman announced in a press conference today that Egypt will not use electronic voting in the next presidential election.
Othman said electronic voting is currently too costly and requires extensive preparation to ensure the voting process is transparent and everyone is able to vote.
Othman also said Egypt will begin manufacturing the machines needed for electronic voting instead of importing them from overseas.
He added that currently the ministry is preparing the voting lists for the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. The minister also said that Egyptians will be able to vote using their national ID cards both in Egypt and overseas and that Egyptian embassies will oversee the voting process outside of Egypt.
This seems like pretty good news all around. The ability for expats to vote, in particular is more than feasible and there was no great reason not to do it. I previously expressed my doubts about an electronic election process, but that was mainly when I was unsure of whether internet voting was a potential. I think Egypt is more than capable of a well-done automated election, but it takes time – more than a few months – to choose a system, ensure it works, train poll workers how to use, etc.
I’ve stated before that the debate over the merits of election technology is largely unimportant. Technology is a tool, not an independent actor. In most cases it amplifies intent; both deficiencies and capabilities become more apparent. Whether Egypt ultimately decides to use automated machines or paper ballots is less important than how they decide to structure their Election Management Body, and how well they administer their elections.
Tunisian official proposes delaying elections to Oct 16
Not terribly surprising considering they haven’t worked out any details of the next election.
Egypt reveals new electoral law, stalls on system design
The New Wafd Party
Egypt’s military government announced amendments to the electoral law today, although noticeably absent was any mention of the country’s electoral system. From what I gather the debate is currently between list pr and single member districts although the details of either have been nonexistent.
While it’s nice they aren’t rushing such an important decision I do think they need hurry up if they want to hold the September elections on time. District creation takes time, at least if you want to do it fairly. Furthermore, this is creating an unfair burden on political parties who have no way of devising electoral strategies. If a nationwide, list pr system is adopted this is not nearly as big a deal, but that is unlikely. Any sort of district creation, however, will force parties to prioritize where they run candidates.
All electoral systems force tactical voting, but Egypt’s fractionlized party system will place an extraordinary burden on voters. In order to cast a tactical vote, a citizen must know the relative strength of each party. This allows an individual to avoid wasting a vote on a party that has no chance of winning, while picking the best option that has a realistic shot at victory. In Egypt, the electoral viability of any given party or candidate in a district will be largely unknown, and the longer it takes to draw district, the less time elites will have in providing that information to voters .
Formal models that predict the effective number of parties, optimal organization strategies for parties, and tactical voting decisions by electors, are all based on the assumption that actors have an understanding of the parties’ strength. I believe this lack of information will disproportionality hurt secular and liberal parties, while favoring the more organized Muslim Brotherhood. The reason for this? The Brotherhood occupies a space on the right of the political spectrum larger than any liberal party occupies on the left. Tactical voting, in other words, will be a much greater challenge for these voters. Or to use a Downsean model, the cost of obtaining information for a conservative is far less than that for liberals. It may be the case that Egypt’s military rulers are putting of the decision on an electoral system in an effort to make the election fair. The longer it takes for them to decide, however, the less legitimate the results will be.
Egypt to abandon current electoral system
It looks like Egypt will be scrapping its current electoral system in favor of some sort of mixed or parallel system. I’ll have more to say on this soon, but the short takeaway is this is terrific news for secular and liberal parties. Egypt’s current system creates several coordination problems and favors local elite powerbrokers over actual parties.
Egyptian government to introduce e-voting system, ensure future allegations of fraud
I’ve previously praised Estonia’s internet voting system, not so much for the concept (unnecessary) , but their execution. Internet voting is fraught with challenges and Estonia has done an admirable job of creating a system that addresses them. But it’s not easy to administer an e-voting system; Estonia had to rewrite laws and spend considerable effort to make theirs work. So I got a little scared today when I read that Egypt was planning on introducing an electronic voting system for their upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
Electronic voting can mean both internet voting, or simply automated machines; it’s not clear what they are referring to here. The mention of Egyptians overseas voting leads me to believe they are talking about internet voting, which would be a disaster. This could, of course, simply mean automated voting, which would be slightly less of a disaster. Indonesia, the Philippines and India are all examples of non-Western democracies that have implemented automated voting; the success of such programs is subjective, but generally acknowledged. All of those processes, however, took considerable time to develop (not five months!). While I have heard that India was advising Egypt on election administration, I find it hard to believe they would recommend moving to this system so quickly.
This leads me to believe they may actually be thinking about internet voting. This actually might be better than an automated system, as it would not require buying thousands of machines (and training people how to use them). Internet voting, however, is far from secure. I would also think a high profile election like Egypt’s would attract top hacker talent – some political, some bored teenagers – from around the world. So don’t’ be surprised if internet votes make Ruby the next president of Egypt.
No one could have predicted this
Feb 14
I’ve heard this a lot over the past couple of weeks with regards to the revolution in Egypt; there is some truth to it. On January 7th, I remember reading this article, which used Egyptian humor to highlight the hopelessness that the country had become used to feeling. I do think, however, that some of […]
Internal Alliances Collapsing
Feb 5
My friend Sam Tadros has a new piece in the American Thinker about the recent events in Egypt. There is a lot here, so I’m not going to go into all of it, but one point Sam makes is worth highlighting: The army never liked Gamal or his friends. Gamal had never served in the […]
Not Business as Usual in Egypt
Jan 29
This gallery contains 1 photo.
For some reason I don’t think that firing the Egyptian cabinet is going to cut it at this point. It’s true that the interior minister was truly hated, but we don’t know what is really going to happen to him. Similarly, given his position within the military, sacking Defense Minister Mohamed Tantawi will probably not […]
Ahwa Talk 