ELECTION DAY PHASE

Elections Conducted by Robot?

The emergence of the virus infamously known as COVID-19 forced nations to

implement vigilant and cautious procedures to prevent its prevalence. In Rwanda to
avoid minimize physical contractions, menial activities such as recording
temperatures and administering medications, robots donated by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) were deployed to perform these tasks.

Robotics have recently been a household topic throughout the masses for personal
and commercial use. Robotics are infrequent to spot in homes and fields such as
manufacturing and health and safety. There is a very high possibility that robots may
be capable of conducting elections in the near future, this thought always aggravates
anxiety throughout the whole election department since technology is slowly leading
to unemployment.

It is usually hypothesised that elections conducted by robots will reduce costs while
improving the integrity of the electoral process. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, social
distancing in public is highly encouraged and this would be the most perfect timing of
robots to be activated in the electoral process. More technology is bound to be
introduced by supplying drones for the transportation of medical essential such as
blood supplies and life-saving medicines. Over the next two decades, human service
jobs will be replaced by robotic devices, but due to the low availability of necessary
infrastructure in Africa, it might take more than 20 years for the revolution of robotics
to be fully activated.

Improving Electoral Integrity through Digital Identification

The government of China decided to analyse and monitor the behavioural patterns of
Chinese citizens to perpetuate the beliefs of the ancient Chinese philosophies of
honesty and integrity while reducing criminal activities. Facial recognition technology
was introduced in China to trace, track, and recognise every citizen. Facial
recognition has gained traction and has slowly been an influential instrument in
public facilities such as hospitals, banks, airports, hotels, etc. People are now easily
identified through face and voice recognition technological devices.

Facial recognition is bound to serve the election dimension with a plethora of

benefits such as eradicating multiple voting in different voting stations. Long queues
at polling venues and being dependant on paper ballots and voting machines in
Africa may conclude once biometrics such as digital identification have been
introduced. Voting registrations and ballot counting are usually sped up by E-voting.
E-voting has the potential to minimize costs and deliver accurate results. If
implemented effectively and efficiently, biometrics can handle health related issues.

The minor disadvantages of adopting data identification and other biometrics in

elections foreshadows a lot of opportunities for developing solutions to overcome
hurdles that African electoral processes are challenged with. The initiative of digital
identification has the potential to minimize multiple voting and ballot-box snatching.