Elections 2024: Examining EMS’s operation in the absence of the internet

Election Management System (EMS) compilation method for the general elections of 2024, scheduled for this week.

However, how will this recently developed system work across the country without internet access?

Col. Muhammad Saad Ali, the project director of EMS, has supplied the following explanation, which will be used for the next general elections’ result compilation and tabulation.

“We have developed a private network of the election commission that has been spread across the country, involving the services of PTCL and other firms,” he added. “Our EMS is not internet-based but intra-net-based.”

He added that every province assembly seat in the nation receives three laptops, while every national assembly constituency receives four.

In response to a question about how the system would function without internet connection, he noted that all of these laptops will function offline via the local area network (LAN) set up in each returning officer’s (RO) office in the event that connectivity is lost.

“The public who are present in the RO office will be able to witness the compilation processes as one laptop will be dedicated to continuously displaying progressive results over multimedia at a prominent place for live results to be received,” the official stated.

By taking a picture and sending it to the returning officer via cellphone, the presiding officer will communicate the results to the returning officer. The place and time of the photo’s capture will be shown.

“The image will automatically be saved if there is no connectivity, and it will arrive at its destination once connectivity is restored. The forensic data will be accessible in the event that Form 45 cannot be filed for a few hours, he continued.

A local area network (LAN) is a group of devices connected to a single physical place, such a building, business, or house, according to Google.

A local area network (LAN) can have many different sizes, from a single user network at home to an enterprise network in an office or school with thousands of users and devices.

He acknowledged that there wouldn’t be much of an impact overall because of the laptop facility when asked if the system would be impacted by a blackout. But connectivity might be affected, thus ROs are advised to set up UPS, etc.