{UAH} Electronic Voting

In 2007, expressed very strong views against allowing visitors from Uganda to vote in UNAA elections. In 2011, I served briefly as a Secretary to the EC and was very supportive of implementing the new provision for separating membership fees from convention fees. With that background, I can say that I support the move to online voting. 

However, as I mentioned last week, I doubt very much that UNAA is ready for online voting.  The recent controversy surrounding the competing communications from the EC indicate that the UNAA is not ready for online voting.  

When the EC says that they are not ready to conduct online voting, I think it is not wise of us to force them to do so.  That will lead to more conflicts and fights...at a time when we have not recovered from the 2013 fights.

I strongly believe that UNAA's long term stability is more important than short-term tactical victories of any candidates.  

I also have a problem with registering members for the sole purpose of voting in elections.  Such members have a tendency of messing up UNAA and leaving it to regular members to deal with the mess.  That is why i could be open to the idea that online voting would be limited to renewing members.  That restriction also addresses my other concern...verifying the identity of the voter.  I heard the argument that current drives to register voters is similar to national political parties' drives to register voters.  I think that there is a big difference.  The parties register citizens who already qualify to register and vote.  In my view,  the current UNAA drives are like someone going to Mexico and asking folks to come to the US and apply for citizenship and vote...worse, I have heard of people offering to pay membership fees for potential voters.  That is akin to going to illegal immigrants  and offering to get them citizenship to vote for you.  Of course those scenarios provide short term tactical advantages but they risk long term problems for UNAA.  

I want to think that all candidates want UNAA to emerge stronger and united from the current mess.  We should all keep our eyes focused on that goal.  Let us all avoid things that will bring more discord to UNAA.

thanks