E-Voting Machines to Be Unveiled Next Week

A lawmaker said e-voting machines for the city council elections will be unveiled next week.

Qasem Mirzaei-Nekou made the statement in an interview with ICANA on Tuesday. E-polling helps minimize irregularities, cut costs and considerably accelerate the process of counting votes.

Security concerns prevented electronic voting in this year's Majlis elections. The legislator said that in the new process, voters will be identified by their ID cards and fingerprints will be required to record votes.

"We seek e-polling in two or three provinces," he said.

Mohammad Mahmoudi, another lawmaker, said earlier this week that voting machines will be used in one-sixth of the polling stations across the country, the total number of which is 66,000 that constitute one-third of eligible voters.

In the 2013 city council votes, over 48 million Iranians were eligible to cast votes.

The Interior Ministry is the organizer of Iranian elections and nominees for council polls are vetted by a special board of Majlis lawmakers, which will also oversee the polls.

This is while for the presidential, parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections, the Guardians Council is in charge of vetting the candidates and supervising the polls.

Salman Samani, the Interior Ministry spokesman, announced on Tuesday that members of election headquarters for the city council election have been appointed by Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli. Ali Asghar Ahmadi, deputy interior minister for political affairs, will chair the body and Ali Pourali Motlaq will serve as secretary.

Nominees will have one week to sign up from March 20 to 26 and their campaign period is May 11-17.

The council polls, scheduled for May 19, 2017, will be held concurrent with the presidential election.