Electronic voting ensures ease and safety, saves time and guarantees fair elections, said electronics engineer Mohamed el-Nemr. He said electronic voting provides a database of candidates along with their campaigns. He said that when voters log on to vote, the program verifies their data and gives the voter a secret number to vote with, ensuring a fraud-free voting process. According to el-Nemr, each stage of the electoral process is electronically secure through ways that ensure the highest protection possible, whether it's filming the voter or voting via fingerprint identification. In an interview with Mona el-Shazly's popular evening talk show ‘10pm,' el-Nemr said votes will be collected electronically, copies will be made and firewalls will be placed around the voting site to protect them against any viruses or hackers. Vice President of the Egyptian Society for the Fight against Cyber Crime, Ashraf Khafagy, said that paperwork takes each voter four minutes at least to fill out, while e-voting ensures that the entire process is complete in less than a minute. Several systems can be applied in Egypt including the one used in India and other countries which show pictures of candidates on computer screens to ease the voting process for illiterate voters, he said. Khafagy said the role of the judiciary won't be limited to emailing. It will include monitoring the entire process from beginning to end as well as ascertaining the identity of voters by putting their cards on the scanner in order to access all of their data. El-Nemr said e-voting should be introduced in trade unions, clubs, councils, and associations as well as extending it to general elections. This, he said, will make the Egyptian citizen aware of how to use the system as well as teach him or her to trust it, given that it will be used in other fields including banks and universities.
