Kathmandu, October 27

The Election Commission has sought help from donor agencies to study external voting as the polls panel lacks enough budget for the same.

The Supreme Court had recently directed the EC and the government to ensure out-of-country voting for Nepali nationals, including migrant workers, from the next elections.

EC Spokesperson Deepak Subedi said the polls panel had limited budget so it had sought help from development partners, adding that the EC had also sought extra budget from the Ministry of Finance to conduct research on external voting.

Subedi said one of the development partners told the EC that it would inform within this month whether or not it could provide assistance. “Development partners can either help us build our software system or support our technical staff to visit countries where external voting is practised so that they can get first-hand information,” he said.

“We want to adopt a system that is feasible and enables ordinary voters, who are not very tech-savvy. We do not think that the kind of system in European counties will be feasible in our context,” he added.

“Our staff are also gathering information on how many countries have external voting and what mode of voting they follow,” he added.

Election Commissioner Ila Sharma said the EC was awaiting the government’s response on external voting. “We were ready to conduct external voting in the 2013 CA election, but could not do so due to lack of relevant laws. We are always ready for it,” she said and added that the EC needed to act now. “If we have to ensure external voting from the next elections, we need to work in full swing from now because we have to prepare voter rolls and introduce compatible software,” she said, adding that the EC would have to work in two phases before ensuring external voting – research phase and pilot programme/simulation. “We have not heard from the government on external voting,” she added.

Subedi said he believed allowing Nepalis living abroad to vote through electronic means would be more practical, but the EC needed to conduct research on that option too. He said if a provision was made only for Nepalis living abroad to vote from Nepali diplomatic missions, all eligible voters might not be able to reach the cities where diplomatic missions were located and they might not be able to cast their votes. “If we allow only our diplomatic missions to conduct elections, Nepalis living in countries where we do not have diplomatic missions, may not be able to vote,” he said.