The electoral commission presiding officers whose stations will be found to have more ticked ballot papers than the voters will face a five-year jail term, according to the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Norbert Mao.
On Monday, July 7, 2025, Minister Mao, who is also the president of the Democratic Party, while addressing the party’s weekly presser in Kampala, said he has introduced a bill on electronic voting.
“We have put that any presiding officer who is found to have more casted ballots as captured by the biometric machine than the number of voters at a particular station will be jailed for five years,” Minister Mao at the party headquarters.
According to Mao, he has already presented the proposed law in Cabinet.
“A cabinet committee was appointed to handle it, and when I go back to cabinet, I will make sure we discuss and close the chapter, because there were objections such as network failure, electricity shortage, or computer hacking, but we have overcome all these because this is a standalone machine that does not require all those,” he added.
He explained that the electronic voting bill is aimed at dealing with the problem of ballot staffing, making electronic voting mandatory, and stopping the overturning of election results.
Mao noted that the bill requires that there should be biometric machines at every polling station, unlike what the Electoral Commission is using currently.
“The biometric machines will be using features like fingerprints and facial appearance,” he said.
He said when passed into law, it’s the best answer to the allegations of ballot stuffing.
“I hear ballot staffing occurs when ballot boxes are exchanged while en route. In Uganda, theoretically elections must be free and fair, but they are not. We are bench-marking with India, where electronic voting has done wonders. In those countries there are machines that issue you a receipt, which is used as confirmation that you voted,” he explained.
Once passed by the cabinet, the bill will be introduced to Parliament for further processing.
