Senator Taj Haider from the People’s Party has expressed strong reservations about the transmission of election results through the mobile app EMS. In a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner, he said that there are serious concerns about the new and non-approved application being used for the electronic transmission of results. He feared that the situation would be similar to the failure of the RTS system in the 2018 general elections, and that the application could be used for large-scale rigging in the results, causing long delays in the tabulation of temporary results.
He also raised concerns that the design of the EMS application, which is being used for the first time in the elections, requires Presiding Officers and Assistant Presiding Officers to have specific category mobile phones, and that the app is only compatible with selected phone models, not every smartphone. He emphasized the need to provide special instructions to the presiding officers and assistant presiding officers for downloading the EMS mobile app and making their cameras operational on their phones, as this could affect the election results.
Senator Haider suggested using WhatsApp instead of EMS in order to communicate with polling officers and agents, providing their WhatsApp numbers to the relevant presiding officers at each polling station, and creating groups where candidates can lodge complaints, with immediate action from the relevant presiding officer.