South Africa: Constitutional Assembly Resources

27 March 1995

Voter Registration

The idea of each individual voting on issues of regional or national interest, like they do in Switzerland, must appeal to every genuine Democrat
I believe that this is technologically achievable; I do not have the means to investigate the practical feasibility completely.

What if we were able to utilise an existing, highly accessible, well proven system of computers to register and count each individual's preference(s).

Each voter is issued with a card, which is magnetically encoded with all the relevant voter information. The cards are readable at all the bank ATM's in the country.
As with the usual ATM card, each person has a secret PIN code.
When an issue is debated and is ready for a referendum, (or when it is time for regional or national
elections) the banks' computers are geared to reading inputs from all the ATMs for a specified period of time

* In this manner each individual can make his/her voice heard conveniently and easily.

* There is no need for setting up polling booths.

* The infrastructure already exists

* Secrecy of ballots and control of fraud should not be impossible to deal with, given that the trade; have already developed fairly sophisticated methods to do so.

* A computer system would be able to ensure that voters only exercise one vote (or whatever number of votes are allocated in a new constitution).

* The onerous task of counting votes can be dispensed with

* Results are available quickly

* They can be analysed in more detail

* It would be a unique system in the world

As I said, I do not have the means to evaluate the practical problems, but I do believe that the concept is feasible.

I would appreciate brief feedback regarding this idea.
(Should you find this useful I might consider a post as honorary life President of South Africa)


Armin Hubert Gruning