In democracy, election is most important exercise. Governments get formed because of election and they loot and destroy the country for next 5 years (as happens in Pakistan). So, country cannot afford dhandli and suspicious or doubtful election results (one should give fair chance to loot and plunder, whoever country elects).
It is also important that all parties in country should accept election results as free and fair, else parties in Pakistan have capability to take the country into anarchy, and even break-up the country (all want to loot, so they lose a lot if unfairly kept away from office of looting). Certainly, if not break-up of Pakistan, lot of law and order problems can happen if parties reject election results.
Thus, for the purpose, if country needs to spend a lot on election, even hold election again, than that should happen. To get free and fair election, country can sacrifice few more months of caretaker government else it would be 5 years of unacceptable government (a government formed on the backing of dhandli … real or perceived).
The way things have turned up in this election (Pakistan 2013 election) with so much ‘dhandli’ at all constituencies and all parties complaining, I think election of 11 May should be declared ‘null and void’, and new election should be held in 60 to 90 days.
I do not think that countering ‘dhandlies’ is big problem. When there is will, there is fool-proof ways.
My suggestion: There should be one ‘head office of counting and compiling’ in every province that should compile NA and PA results. In ‘head office of counting’, just for observation and monitoring, there should be army men (at least one major general, two brigadiers, and several other officers), 2 to 3 representatives of each party contesting in province, foreign observers if required, media men from all major media houses, and two high court judges.
All polling stations should be connected to ‘head office of counting’ with internet (a simple phone line for the purpose is sufficient).
Polling stations should get accounted voting sheets. There should be no counting at polling stations, rather, polling stations should scan votes (voting sheets vote is casted) and send them to ‘head office of counting’ using internet. Polling station can do that every couple of hours.
Later, polling stations should send all used and unused voting sheets to ‘head office of counting’ that should be checked with number of sheets polling stations received (that means, no votes are discarded at polling stations or no sheet destroyed … well, if sheet got destroyed then polling station should send destroyed voting sheet with reason or circumstances that sheet got destroyed).
ID card has thumb prints. So, at head office of counting, thumb print on the voting sheet should get automatically compared with thumb print on voter’s list (can be done automatically on computer) and if thumb print is validated then votes get accounted automatically by computer, and the thumb print on record marked (no two votes using same thumb print). Computer should do accounting automatically.
Further, to bring transparency, just after voting finishes, computer sends the results to the media directly with total number of votes each candidate receives. That’s it, no human interference and thus no dhandli. Later, election commission can declare the result officially (after taking all legibility and illegibility of candidates on account)
[Note: If acceptable, instead of voting on voting sheets, a voter could vote on computer directly using his thumb print, though some believe that direct voting on computer is difficult for many voters, as many have not even seen computer in life.
Anyhow, following such procedure would get rid of all fake votes, as each vote would get accounted after verification that in that polling station the vote was valid, as some voter in that constituency had that thumb print who himself came to polling station to vote.]