Engineer Dr Badru Kiggundu, Chairman electoral Commission (Daily Monitor Photo)According to today’s New Vision (27 October 2009), “THE Electoral Commission has denied there are ghosts on the voters’ register. They have challenged the authors of a study alleging so to prove their claims. They said they have been cleaning and updating the register since 1996 using the latest technology and all the information is available on their website.
“We don’t have ghost voters on our list. We have been continually cleaning our register as best as the technology we have had since we came on board,” said commission chief Badru Kiggundu.
About using the latest technology, I beg to differ from Dr Kiggundu, in a procurement advert from the Electoral commission in the East African Newspaper of 28 September 2009, called for suppliers of diskettes and digital cameras. To say that diskettes in the 21st century are part of the latest technology is to simply take us for a ride.
The Wikipedia defines a floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible ("floppy") magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. Invented by IBM, floppy disks in 8-inch (200 mm), 5¼-inch (133.35 mm), and 3½-inch (90 mm) formats enjoyed many years as a popular and ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange, from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s.
Today however, floppy diskettes have been superseded in use by USB flash drives, external hard drives, CDs, DVDs and memory cards. As the electoral commission plans to use photographic voters’ cards and other advanced technologies, the floppy will do a disservice. With today’s average digital camera having over 5 mega pixels, how will floppies be able to store those images? Millions and millions of them will be required to do that service, where a few external hard drives or flash drives could come in handy.
In light of the strategic importance of the electoral commission, the government should be very careful in selecting people to manage the elections. This gains importance when all political parties including the ruling movement agree that the registers are bloated with over one million ghosts and after the Supreme Court ruled that there was massive rigging in the 2001 and 2006 general elections.
An electoral commission should be neutral, technology savvy to enable it deploy the correct technology capable of safeguarding the ballot with appropriate data security measures to avoid havoc in future.
www.balunywa.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment