MYANMAR JUNTA’S PLANNED ELECTIONS: FALLING SHORT OF DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY outcomes. They have also expressed distrust towards the machines, which they fear can record individual voters’ choices. Another concern expressed is that MEVMs do not include a “none of the above” or “no vote” option, leaving voters without the possibility to abstain. There are also concerns that election staff may be able to alter the vote counts produced by the machines, as some teachers who attended MEVM training allegedly told Khit Thit Media18, Following this article, election workers are reportedly being investigated for leaks19 and asked to sign a pledge not to share any information with the public20. International standards for the use of technology in elections dictate that the adoption of EVMs should be accompanied by more, not less, transparency. For instance, an International IDEA policy paper recommends that “e-voting systems should be certified by an independent agency and audits should be conducted throughout the process to allow independent confirmation of the results21”. It also flags the risk of manipulation by insiders as a weakness of electronic voting, and emphasizes the importance of buy-in from a wide range of stakeholders. Instead of enacting transparency measures, the junta has criminalized voter complaints against MEVMs: under Article 64 of the amended election laws, any person who falsely reports that the VVPAT issued does not match their actual vote could be sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of up to 300,000 kyat (approximately US$150). Myanmar’s electronic voting system lacks transparency measures and independent oversight. In this context, there are serious risks that EVMs could be misused in ways that undermine electoral integrity 18 19 20 21 60 [in Burmese] Khit Thit Media, “စစ််ကော�ာင််စီီက ထုုတ််လုုပ််ထားး�သည့််� မြ�န််မာာအီီလက််ထရော�ာနစ်် မဲဲပေး�းစက််က မဲဲရလဒ်် များ��းကိုု� လိုု� သလိုု� ချျက််ချျင်းး� အပြော��ာင်းး�အလဲဲလုုပ််နိုု�င််ပြီး�း� သက််သေ�မကျျန််”, 15 July 2025, https://yktnews.com/2025/07/221382/ [in Burmese] DVB, “မဲဲပေး�းစက််က မဲဲခိုးး��၍ရသည််ဟုု သတင်းး�ပြ�န့််�ပြီး�း�နော�ာက်် ဆရာာ၊ ဆရာာမများ��း စစ််ဆေး�းခံံနေ�ရ”, 7 September 2025, https://burmese.dvb.no/post/723075 [in Burmese] DVB, “ရွေး�း�ကော�ာက််ပွဲဲ�အချျက််အလက််များ��း မပေါ�ါက််ကြား�း�ရန်် Non CDM ဝန််ထမ်းး�များ��း ဝန််ခံံလက််မှှတ််ထိုးး��ရ”, 7 September 2025, https://burmese.dvb.no/post/723031 International IDEA, “Introducing Electronic Voting Essential Considerations”, 1 December 2011, https://www. idea.int/sites/default/files/2023-09/introducing-electronic-voting.pdf