ISLAMABAD ( Special Report )
Unlike Pakistan’s general elections 2013, the mobile phone has emerged as a powerful tool just ahead of the elections that will play an important role to influence the results this time. There are various reasons we can say that the role of mobile phone will be important in the general elections in 2018.
The social media is being used by the political parties to target voters with their ads. This is an important move keeping in view the fact that about 44 million Pakistani’s are using social media. Major political parties of Pakistan are running their social media campaigns and most of them have millions of followers on their social media pages. The campaigns either can be positive or negative as often fake news related to the other parties are often spread on the social media to influence the voters.
Some of the Political parties even hire trolls for the encouragement of polarization, defaming and launching personal attacks on social media. Both positive and negative videos are being spread on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp ahead of the general elections in 2018. Political parties are also using SMS services for their election campaigns, by promoting their election agenda to the people of Pakistan who don’t use social media platforms.
The state of art new technology is being introduced in the country by the election commission of Pakistan. A mobile app has been developed to ensure in order to ensure result’s quick result transmission from the polling stations to the Election Commission of Pakistan. For ensuring the reliability and verifiability of data various features have been introduced. The mobile app is called Result Transmission System (RTS).
Anyone from any part of the world will be able to access the results in real time using an Android mobile app called “Click ECP”.
Voters will be able to easily get their voting details e.g serial number and name of the polling station by their CNIC number to 8300. Previously, these details were provided by the polling station to the voters on a simple plain paper.
Keep in mind the inconveniences that are caused to the voters while searching their specific polling stations. The ECP has introduced a new feature that will allow the voters to trace their particular polling stations on Google Map. As for general elections 2018, the geotagging of polling stations has been done all over the country.
The Election commission of Pakistan has ensured impartial, free and fair election and emphasized on the fact that they will be different from the past. As we can see that the mobile phone is playing a vital role in the general elections in 2018. So, we can say that in near future elections will be contested via mobile phones.