In recent news by The Express Tribune, The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has come up with an ambitious and strategic plan for the next five years. The plan (Second Five Year Strategic Plan 2014-2018) aims at holding the 2018 general polls using Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and completing the mapping and demarcation of constituencies using Geographical Information System (GIS).
The digitization of vote using EVM rolls out when the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and the Dr. Tahirul Qadri led Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) are set to launch a country wide protest campaign demanding reforms in electoral system.
To avoid gerrymandering – the practice of drawing boundaries of constituencies to establish political advantage for a group, the ECP plans to delimit constituencies by using the Geographical Information System (GIS). However, new delimitations are conditional to a fresh population census, which is due since 2008. ECP in its strategic plan has once again asked the government to complete fresh census by next year.
The national and provincial assembly constituencies were delimited in 2002 on the basis of the 1998 population census. The 2008 general elections and the 2013 polls were conducted on the basis of 2002 delimitations. New census would result into increase of number of seats in the legislatives in accordance with the ratio of population increase.
Source: The Express Tribune