Inside KOPOT’s Digital System: The Making of the 2024 ‘Official’ Turnout

As Bangladesh approaches the 13th national election scheduled for 12 February 2026, a forensic review of the 2024 parliamentary vote has zeroed in on a startling late-day spike: official turnout rose by 12 points in roughly two hours. The TechGlobal Institute’s January 2026 brief, “Hijacking the Vote: Inside Bangladesh’s Data-Driven Election Manipulation,” says the centrally run KOPOT dashboard showed nationwide turnout near 28% at poll close, then was revised to “more or less 40%” without public explanation during a boycotted election.

The report calls the jump a product of administrative discretion, not natural voter flow. Because KOPOT and the voter-facing Smart Election Management BD app are proprietary and opaque, researchers say there are no safeguards against altering or selectively reporting figures. With no published transmission logs or required reconciliation to signed polling-station forms, the surge remains a “black box” that undermines confidence.

The brief also notes that in remote hill and coastal areas, results were sometimes cleared via WhatsApp, creating a parallel channel outside formal audit trails and making later verification almost impossible.

Looking to the 2026 vote under interim leader Muhammad Yunus, TechGlobal urges three fixes:
Mandatory reconciliation: show digital tallies alongside scanned, signed station result forms.
Audit trails: publish time-stamped server logs pinpointing when and where revisions enter the system.
Statistical triggers: auto-flag turnout above 90% or zero-invalid-ballot centers for manual review.

Analysts warn that unless these steps are taken, Bangladesh risks trading “midnight elections” for data-era manipulation, with the two-hour surge a cautionary case.