By Osman Ozgan

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is preparing to activate a digital system that will prevent cheating at the ballot box during the 2023 June elections, Yeni Shafak has reported.

Thanks to the system, ballot box officials will be able to access the decisions made by the Supreme Election Council (YSK) on the objected issue from the most recent date to the past, the report added.

It noted that with the application, which is planned to be integrated into the AK Election (AK Secim) system (which was implemented before) all the decisions made by the Supreme Election Council so far will be classified and uploaded to this system. The ballot box officials will also be able to reach these decisions via the system developed with special software.

Thus, polling officials will be able to use these decisions as a precedent both at the ballot box and in objections to the committees, which in turn, will enable them to prepare a more comprehensive and effective appeal petition.

Moreover, the petitions prepared and uploaded to the system will be followed by the AK Party Headquarters. By checking the existence of deficiencies and procedural errors in the prepared petitions, the Headquarters will prevent errors and delays in the process.

As part of the preparations initiated for the 2023 June election, the AK Party took the provincial election heads to the training camp. Under the coordination of the Presidency of Election Affairs, the consultation meeting of the provincial election heads was held on December 23-26 in Ankara.

At the camp, training sessions were given on subjects such as election committees, ballot box committees and officials, establishment and working principles of election coordination centers.

At the meetings, the rate of polling officers who took part in the 2018 elections was also evaluated. Accordingly, it was stated that the rate of those who served at the ballot box was 98.2 percent in the lists submitted to the YSK, and the party aimed to increase this figure to over 99 percent.

General elections are scheduled to occur in June 2023 in Turkey. Voters will elect a new president, as well as 600 members of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, each for a term of five years.