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House of Representatives Commence Electronic Voting

House of Representatives Commence Electronic Voting
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has introduced electronic voting system in the conduct of activities of the House, which he said is in compliance with the 8th Assembly’s legislative agenda.
A statement through special adviser to the Speaker on media and public affairs, Turaki Hassan, said already, forms have been distributed to all the 360 members of the House of Representatives to collate their data ahead of production of the e-voting cards. He said the implication of the new system is that records of each member’s punctuality and voting patterns would easily be accessed by his or her constituents and members of the public. Details of the legislative agenda as adopted by the 8th Assembly early last year, showed that “the 8th House commits to the use of ICT in the daily conduct of legislative activities of the House. E-parliament and e-voting platforms will be made a regular feature of the House. “E-voting will be used regularly during voting to properly reflect voting records of members and parliamentary accountability. The House shall collaborate with relevant stakeholders to achieve the goal of an eparliament.”

It was stated that the eparliament initiative would operate on the platform of modern, up-to-date digital technology. The Special Adviser further said internet and intranet access supported by computerized legislative information management system would be put in place. Other initiatives that would be introduced he added, include the establishment and equipping of a Parliamentary Information Centre where information and documents of the National Assembly would be made available. He noted that doing this would further increase citizens’ access to the legislature and solve the problem of public access to authentic documents of parliament.

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