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Zambia’s party rejects mobile phones for election results

By , ITWeb’s Zambian correspondent.
Zambia , 08 Jan 2015

Zambia’s party rejects mobile phones for election results

Zambia’s opposition party has now rejected the proposal by the Electoral Commission of Zambia to electronically transmit election results in the forthcoming presidential by-election.

The United Party for National Development (UPND), the country’s largest opposition party had accepted the transmission of results from constituency centres to the commission’s headquarters and the national results centre at Mulungushi Conference Centre in the capital Lusaka using mobile phones.

The UPND said it has received information that intelligence officers will hack into the Electoral Commission of Zambia’s system and manipulate the results against the opposition before sending them to Mulungushi International Conference Centre for final announcement.

The commission plans to use mobile phones to transmit election results but the UPND said it will now not accept the proposal to transmit results using mobile phones.

UPND vice president for politics Dr. Canicius Banda has told ITWeb Africa that after receiving the intelligence information, the party has resolved not to accept the use of electronic transmission of results in order to prevent results manipulation and rigging.

“We want to make it clearly known that we will not accept the electronic transmission of results because we have information that results will be intercepted and manipulated before being sent to national results centre,” Banda said.

The Electoral Commission has however, said it will invite the party to share with it the intelligence report in its possession before deciding the way forward.

The commission has bought mobile phones for all election officials for use in transmitting election results in a bid to bring efficiency in the election management system.

Zambia goes to the polls on January 20 following the death of President Michael Sata last year.

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