In Bangladesh, it is believed that no election since the country’s independence was free and fair. ‘Mechanism’ or ‘election engineering’, two buzz words during election that made me curious whether a foolproof election, which can dispel disbelief and disputes, is possible or not, making election landscape in the country purged off accusations and counter-accusations.
CC camera monitoring in the entrance, digital archiving of ballots after the voting – permanently and comprehensively – offers Bangladesh a rare chance to finally bury decades of electoral disbelief. It is not merely a technological upgrade; it is a credibility reset. By monitoring every entry in the polling centre through CCTV and digitally preserving every ballot it prints, casts, seals, and counts, the Election Commission (EC) can present verifiable evidence of electoral integrity while reclaiming an image long scarred by allegations of manipulation engineered to favour or disfavour parties and individuals.
Bangladesh can no longer afford the stigma of vote rigging when it was possible to have every ballot having serial number. The country is capable to install CC Camera to monitor each entry and exit in less than 50 thousand centres. It is the fourteenth country in the world to issue National Identity Cards (NIDs) with great fanfare, justified at the time as a costly but decisive solution to electoral fraud. The promise was simple: no NID, no vote. Yet the promise collapsed, not because technology or NID failed, but because institutions did. Either the EC failed to act independently, or politicians ensured it could not. The result was elections held without a level playing field and credibility steadily drained from the democratic process. Search Committee, which included Prof Syed Manjurul Islam of Dhaka University, for hunting Election Commissioners was turned into a drama during the former government of Awami League. That search committee found some guys who ended up in nighttime voting.
Article 118 of the Constitution of Bangladesh entrusts the Election Commission with conducting free and fair elections and taking all ancillary and consequential actions necessary to safeguard electoral integrity. Ballot preservation falls within this ancillary mandate. However, the Constitution does not specify how long ballots or that CCTV footage must be preserved; that responsibility is delegated to statutory law and election rules.
The governing framework is the Representation of the People Order (RPO), 1972, supplemented by election rules and EC-issued instructions and circulars. Under this framework, all used and unused ballots must be sealed immediately after counting and ballots must remain under the custody of the Returning Officer or the EC. Preservation is required primarily to allow election petitions, judicial scrutiny, and court-ordered recounts.
By law and long-standing practice, ballots are preserved for at least one year after results are published. If any election petition or court case is pending, ballots must be preserved until final disposal. Once the statutory period ends and no litigation remains, the EC may lawfully destroy the ballots following due process.
There is no constitutional or statutory obligation to preserve ballots permanently so they are destroyed after the stipulated timeframe. This practice aligns with both Bangladeshi law and international norms. Even mature democracies such as the UK, India, and Canada do not retain physical ballots indefinitely.
While ballots are destroyed, the EC retains gazette notifications, final result sheets (Form 8/ Form 10 equivalents), voter turnout records, constituency-wise results, delimitation and polling documentation. These records, not physical ballots or CCTV footages, constitute the permanent electoral archive which are very flimsy documentation.
As ballots are not snapped and archived and no footage of entry and exit of voters, citizens have no legal right to inspect ballots after the retention period.
Digital archiving of ballots, by photographing or scanning each vote, offers a way out of this legal and trust deficit. In an era where almost everything is digitised, ballots should not remain the last analogue relic vulnerable to suspicion. Permanent digital records would allow disputes to be resolved swiftly, transparently, and conclusively. Vote counting would become easier, audits faster, and manipulation exponentially harder. Manual ballots, once digitised, could be stored without fear of tampering.
Given the total number ballots are 120 million. Available phone cameras are 43,000 with one each for presiding officer or his deputy to take snap. One clear photo per ballot. Each phone would need to photograph approximately 2,791 ballots.
Firstly, if snapping is fast but realistic, one photo every 2 seconds and the total time per phone will consume 1.33hrs or 1.5 hours. Secondly, if one photograph takes 5 seconds total time per phone will take 3.9 hours or 4 hours. Finally, if one photo takes 10 seconds, total time per phone will take 7.75 hours or 8 hours. If average image size is 2 MB, total data volume will stand at (120 million × 2 MB) = 240 TB. In an age of cloud storage, this is not a barrier; it is a policy choice.
Bangladesh’s election law requires ballot preservation only for a limited time, after which destruction is lawful. But legality is not legitimacy. Permanent digital archiving of ballots would transform elections from acts of faith into matters of evidence. It would close the chapter on electoral disbelief, neutralise disputes before they metastasise, and restore public confidence where decades of controversy have hollowed it out. The technology exists. The math works. What remains is the political will and free, fair voting in all centres.
The writer is a journalist and political analyst
