#AmericaDecides exposes the obvious flaws in our electoral process

If you have been paying attention to current events all over the world since this past week, you no doubt by now are aware of one of the biggest events currently unfolding, the presidential election of the United States of America.

With an election so big, and a lot of international interests at stake, it’s amazing that they manage to keep it transparent.

The presidential race, in a nutshell, is two of the most qualified candidates in the country dogging it out to win the votes of the people.

No violence, bullying, buying of votes, vote manipulation, gaslighting and bypassing electoral processes like debates. It is just two candidates who highlight the nation’s issues and relay to the people the policies they plan to implement, if voted in, to fix the problem.

This admirable democratic show down is the reason why many Nigerians have gone to Twitter today to highlight the problems the country experiences with its elections, and what Nigerians want during the 2023 elections.

The Nigerian government and the country’s electoral commission, Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), for the longest time now have been unwilling to be transparent with the country’s electoral process. Every four years, it seems there’s a discrepancy somewhere in the voting system, suggesting that the voting results have been altered if at all even existent.

From thugs caught on camera destroying entire polling units and driving voters away, to reports of missing ballot boxes in numerous constituencies, to videos surfacing online showing children not old enough to vote queuing up to cast their votes, not to mention those long hours spent on manually tallying votes and using days to slowly and annoyingly announce voting results on TV, the presidential election in Nigeria is nothing short of a joke.

From its processes to lack of transparency to outdated voting systems, INEC needs to take pointers from the US elections to make the 2023 elections truly free and fair.

One of the big things for the US elections this year was its mail-in voting, a process that allowed citizens who are eligible to vote but are outside the country to vote, it also allowed disabled people to vote from their homes, and people in high-risk Covid-19 areas to vote from their homes, so they don’t risk coming out and spreading the virus. But for the Nigerian public, this system is more a security solution, as it would allow people vote without fear of violence.

Another key issue is using automated programs to count votes rather than people, particularly youth corp members who can be subject to intimidation, threats and bribery. The tiresome process can lead to mistakes that complicate the true results. Employing the use of electronic voting machines is sure to fix this issue, while also fixing the problem of tampering.

However, there is hardly any iota of political will to move these electoral systems to more effective methods.

“The repeated electoral crises are merely symptoms of a much deeper moral crisis. As long as our politicians care more about serving themselves than serving the Nation, we will not make progress.”

Bishop Matthew Kukah, the Convener of the National Peace Committee.

It’s still a long way to go before Nigeria can boast of the kind of voting system America uses, but the fact that automated voting systems are already in use in some parts of the world and have proven to work with accuracy that manual systems trumps any excuse that INEC or the Nigerian government can come up with.

Besides, the system of employing old boring men who need ‘extra lights’ to see what they wrote themselves is unbecoming.

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