The Egyptian government is preparing to introduce an electronic voting system for the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for September.
Refaat Qemsan, head of the Interior Ministry's elections department, said the system will allow eligible citizens to vote by submitting their national identity card data online.
At a forum held Tuesday in Cairo, Qemsan said current election laws only concern Egyptians residing in Egypt, adding that most expatriate Egyptians do not have Egyptian IDs. Qemsan called for including expatriate Egyptians in any new voting system.
Maged Othman, minister of communications and information technology, said the country is ready to introduce an electronic system of voting in time for the parliamentary and presidential elections.
However, observers believe Egyptian elections laws stand in the way of implementing such a system because they refer to paper voter lists and ballot boxes.
Egyptian political parties and movements have said they would like the electronic system to first be piloted in club and syndicate elections before being implemented in national elections.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
