e-voting, the time is now.

As the 2011 general elections approach, the question on everybody’s mind is how do we curb rigging in elections and guarantee free and fair elections.
The answer is e-voting.
Sceptics would naturally ask, is e-voting feasible in Nigeria? We can confidently affirm that e-voting is indeed very possible and feasible in Nigeria.
Polling place electronic voting or Internet voting examples have taken place in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Venezuela, and the Philippines. Why not Nigeria?
A senator representing Ekiti North, Mr. Ayo Arise, has said that electronic voting remains the antidote to election rigging in the country.
Arise stated this in an interview with journalists in Lagos.
“E-voting is not rocket science. People will get used to it. All they need is proper education on usage. When the Global System for Mobile Communications was introduced into the country, there was initial scepticism, but today, most Nigerians have known how to operate GSM. The advantages of e-voting far outweigh its disadvantages.
“The system is equipped with a lot of devices to check rigging. The machines are equipped with 12 hours of battery life in case of power outage.
“This is one solution that will guarantee free and fair elections,” he said.
An electoral voting machine forms a critical part of the fundamental process. All over the world, a well planned and executed election process allows the populace to choose their leader representatives thereby, expressing their franchise and preferences on how they will be governed.
It is therefore significant to emphasize that election e-voting system must be professionally planned, organized, transparently executed and indeed the operational framework must be sufficiently robust to withstand a variety of fraudulent activities. Also, the entire process must be sufficiently transparent and comprehensible to ensure that voters and candidates can accept the results of an election.
Plus they are implemented in such a way that they are much easier to operate than the normal paper ballot system.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM) has successfully used an electronic voting application developed by Naira.com, a business unit of Nigeria's leading ICT firm, Chams Plc.

Naira.com, developed the e-voting application to facilitate the conduct of a transparent, cost-effective and efficient voting exercise.

The application afforded the members of the Institute the chance to vote electronically at the April election of new council members during the Institute's annual general meeting held a few months ago in Lagos using the high-end all-in-one Mac Computers provided by Naira.com.

According to the Registrar of the Institute, Mallam Musa Rabiu, the decision to adopt an e-Voting application is in line with the Institute's vision to be the foremost people management Institute in Africa, respected across the world. He said he was very convinced that application of Information Technology could simplify a lot of things that are currently done manually. “I am a convert of electronic voting and wish that it is deployed in other elections in the country. It has really made things easier and transparent for all to see,” he said.
Of course there would be a lot of challenges involved if this is done in a large scale (nationwide elections) but if it is brought into the system gradually through various organizations, associations then local government and national assembly polls. Who says we cannot have a fully electronic voting process in the 2015 general elections.