The Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) will continue to use mobile phones to transmit election results despite the system being rejected by opposition parties.

Zambia’s opposition political parties have rejected the use of mobile phones to transmit election results in Thursday’s by-elections, claiming the ruling party wants to manipulate the system.

But the ECZ public relations officer Raphael Phiri said the electronic system of transmitting results will nevertheless be used in today’s by-elections despite opposition to it.

He said it was a pilot exercise and will not in any way affect the old manual system of collating and declaring election results.

Phiri also said the ECZ will not use the results obtained through the electronic system for the declaration of the final results.

Phiri further added that the pilot exercise is intended to determine how quickly the election results can be obtained from polling stations considering the complaints by stakeholders over election results announcements in the past.

“Using an Android smartphone, after the official announcement of the polling station election results, each presiding officer will capture the image of the signed election result form at each polling station and transmit the image using the smartphone simultaneously to the constituency totaling centre and the ECZ headquarters in Lusaka,” Phiri said.