I-MAG STS  - Pakistan
The challenges:  Pakistan has hosted some of the most ancient human civilizations known. There are currently over 90
million people eligible to vote. Although Karachi has a population of more than 13 million, and Lahore has more than 9
million people, Pakistan has an area of more than 880,000 square kilometers - about twice the size of the American state of
California. More than seventy spoken languages are in use - not all have agreed upon graphemic representations
(alphabets, pictographs, abujads ...). Pakistan also has more than eight million people who are blind. Whenever there are
contrasting positions and philosophies in an election at least one segment of the population will be disappointed in the
outcome. The key factor is to have almost everyone at least acknowledge that the votes by registered citizens were
accurately counted. This means not only correctly tabulated who voted, but also severely limit exposure, starvation and
disease for millions more. Were we asked, we would suggest a hasty registration effort that captures biometric
identification (fingertip patterns) for anyone who can prove they are a citizen old enough to vote. An application in our
DEEDS ABIDE software suite named Chiru (after an endangered Tibetan antelope) allows the capture of registration
information as well as the construction of ballots. The ballots contain a picture of the candidate, an optional graphic for his
party affiliation and the ability to display his name and the party's name in any language. The digital ballots also use text
to speech synthesis to "say" the candidate's name and party as a mouse device passes over. With adequate central computer
connections and processing power, voting results are posted in near real-time. This page posted 10/18/2007 when Benazir
Bhutto announced her return to Pakistan. We had forwarded some material to her during her exile in London and Dubai.
Home For CHIRU screenshots click here To see some early (2004) predictions on Pakistani floods click here