This Constitutional Assembly (CA) election in Nepal was like a Pandora box, no one knew what was going to come out of it. First of all, it was peaceful than expected and secondly the preliminary results coming out is also baffling. It’s not that I support ideology of a certain leading party, I am surprised at the shift of political bases, like UML loosing in Katmandu where they previously were insurmountable. At the end, winner is the ‘democratic processes’ regardless of any party winning.

The regular online news sites/blogs from Nepal were so overloaded with the visitors that they crashed. This signifies two things: Nepalese living abroad have profound interest in this CA election, and this election failed to capture a very large voting bloc that lives outside the country. Although Nepalese living abroad didn’t get opportunity to vote in this election, I hope they do get chance in upcoming election.

Mail in vote can be one of the solutions for Nepalese abroad. For example, if I needed to vote, I could download a voting slip from Nepalese Consulates website. I could choose my nominee/party based on my region, as stated in my citizenship/passport, and mail it to the Consulate along with the copies of my citizenship, passport, and local identification (in my case driving license of Louisiana) in a sealed envelope. In the front of the envelope, I also will have to mark my election constituency (For example, CA: Kathmandu Constituency Number 3). These will have to be mailed a week earlier than slated election date. The Election commission must establish a mechanism by which there would be fair vote count in the presence of international monitors, inside the Consulate. And finally, these results will be appended with results from Nepal to come up with final numbers.

I think this mechanism should work as this is very simple and economic; we voters are willing to pay for the postage. And this method also has proven success, I know Americans worldwide vote in their elections this way.