Voters facing difficulty with EVMs slowing things down

Voters facing difficulty with EVMs slowing things down

Voters have been facing difficulties in using the electronic voting machine (EVM), which is slowing down voting in the Narayanganj City Corporation elections.

During visits to at least ten polling centres, it was found that many voters were confused when they arrived at the voting booth to cast their votes.

Take Dipali Rani Sarkar, for example. Soon after the polls opened, she went to Narayanganj Government Girls College to vote.

"I made a mistake when casting vote for the mayor post," she told The Daily Star, adding that she had never voted using an electronic voting machine.

In Chief Judicial Magistrate Court centre 2, there was a long queue.

The reason for the long line is that voting is slow. Around a 100 people were standing in the queue to cast their votes.

Voter Kamal Chandra Ghosh said, people will lose interest if casting a single vote takes so long.

People are unfamiliar with the EVM system, according to Delwar Hossain, the centre's polling officer, which is why it is taking so long.

According to Ramjan Ali, presiding officer of Morgan Girls High School, 250 people voted in the first hour.

"Voting is slow due to the EVM. It took about 20 minutes for the first voter in the centre to cast his vote," he said.

For the first time, EVMs are being used in all 192 centres of NCC.

Voting began at 8am in all polling centres across 27 wards of the city and will continue uninterrupted until 4pm.

There are 517,361 registered voters. Among them, 259,846 are women, and four people are from the third-gender community.

Seven candidates are contesting for the post of mayor. Thirty-four women are running for nine reserved ward councillor positions and 148 are running for 27 general ward councillor positions.

Despite election-related tension, no untoward incidents have been reported so far.

Chandraban Begum cast her vote at Morgan Primary school. She expressed her excitement after casting the vote.

"It was difficult for me to go up to the second floor to cast the vote. But after a long time, I'm able to vote," the woman with physical disability said.

Narayanganj Superintendent of Police, Zayedul Alam, told The Daily Star, "Atmosphere is peaceful. No chaos was reported anywhere. More than 5,000 law enforcement personnel have been deployed and 39 magistrates are working to ensure security."