THE ROAD to electronic voting is littered with the detritus of political violence and fraud. It is not a happy record for a country laying claim to democracy and its bedrock free and fair elections. But if technology is the only way to achieve real electoral reform, then so be it. In the process no single person can claim proprietorship of what must surely be a result of many layers of political compromise, of which the Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC) itself is an outstanding example.
Against that background we think it unfortunate that there is a dispute over the ownership of the rights to the electronic voting system. It is true that Mr. Ryan Peralto, the Chairman of the Jamaica Labour Party and his party's representative on the EAC has for long been a passionate advocate of electronic voting.
We recall that when others were dismissing the system as a 'Star Wars fantasy', Mr. Peralto and Mr Seaga remained steadfast in their belief that the system, which would identify voters by fingerprints and allow them to cast ballots for the candidates in their constituency from polling stations anywhere in the island, was the only way to combat bogus voting.
We do not know if Mr. Peralto conceptualised or invented the system, or as is now claimed, it evolved out of the collective thinking of the members of the EAC, but we do know that he championed it when others doubted its practicality.
Mr. Peralto, it now emerges, had a patent registered in the United States for the system after the EAC was unable to do so on legal grounds and was apparently aware of what he was doing.
We applaud the thinking to establish a public trust that would receive on behalf of the people of Jamaica, any royalties that would derive from the patenting of the system.
Where we have some difficulty is with Mr. Peralto's seeming insistence that the trust should be named after him and that he should have an inordinate say on the composition of its members. We find this insistence immodest, bordering on the vulgar. And it does not erase the notion of a conflict of interest. The naming of the foundation and its composition should be left to the membership of the EAC.
The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.
