According to information from the Election Commission published in Prothom Alo (6 January 2026), a total of 1,527,000 postal voters were approved for the 13th national parliamentary election, of whom just over 760,000 were expatriate voters. In other words, a large proportion are abroad, while the rest are within the country.
Within Bangladesh, most postal voters are not ordinary voters; rather, they are government officials and employees, election-duty administrators, and members of law enforcement and service agencies who cannot vote at polling centres due to their official responsibilities.
According to official information from the Election Commission’s “Postal Vote BD” app, the app is primarily used for voter registration and ballot tracking. However, voting itself is still conducted through manual postal ballots, that is, the ballot is sent abroad by mail, filled out by the voter, and then returned by post to the relevant election official in Bangladesh.
While digital tracking is a strength, in practice a large part of the system depends on addresses, postal services, timely delivery, and intermediary controls. As a result, this is less a test of technology than a test of trust.
This system includes security measures such as facial verification and unique numbering/scanning on postal envelopes. However, voters see only an “OK/match” result and have no way of knowing where the approval logs are, where the audit reports are, who controls the data, or what avenues exist for appeal or verification in case of error. For this reason, the crisis of trust is not merely technological, it is also ethical and procedural.
Moreover, even with face recognition in place, the risk of spoofing (deception using photos, videos, or masks) cannot be entirely ruled out. Technical reports such as the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Biometric Spoofing: A JRC Case Study in 3D Face Recognition, as well as reporting by the technology magazine Wired, show that the presence of facial verification alone does not eliminate the risk of manipulation; the real threat of spoofing or presentation attacks remains.
