The Election Commission of Bhutan (ECB) will purchase 1,000 new electronic voting machines this year, said the Chief Election Commissioner Chogyal Dago Rinzin at the official declaration of the National Council results this morning.
The existing EVMs were produced in 2006 and ECB says the machines have completed their lifespan.
ECB’s Head of Department of Civic and Electoral Training, Phub Dorji said the machines are working fine at the moment. “But there were few incidences where some machines didn’t work,” he said.
“Therefore, we will buy in a phase wise manner and maybe we can send enough machines to the polling stations as backup should any of the machines they have stop working.”
Though no major problems were reported during yesterday’s election, he said one of the EVMs in Dagana didn’t function properly .
“The ballot unit was blinking and it didn’t accept the votes, but the control unit was functioning well. So, all the votes were counted in the control unit.”
He added that there was a spare machine and it had to be used.
ECB had already bought 300 EVMs to replace the ones destroyed in the Wangdue Phodrang fire in 2012.
Nearly 170,000 voters voted through electronic voting machines in the National Council election yesterday.
Currently, there are more than 4,000 EVMs with ECB. Different institutions and organizations make use of the machines for different election purposes.
