The recently completed staged elections for Sindh’s municipal councils, including Karachi and Hyderabad, yielded a wealth of lessons. One, if the provincial or federal authorities attempt to postpone the polls, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has the authority to assert its authority. Two, since our law enforcement organisations are capable of producing the right results, peaceful elections are always a possibility. Three, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) boycott of the election and the resulting low turnout demonstrate that all parties must be included in a participatory democracy environment. Four, the smooth operation of the polls demonstrates to the MQM that boycotting them is not a wise course of action. Last but not least, the PPP’s resounding victories across all districts demonstrate the strength of the party in Sindh; by providing a service to the community, it was rewarded with victories in municipal elections. By the time we went to press, the results were coming in, and the PPP was ahead in Hyderabad and Karachi, followed by the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). According to the ECP, the complete results will be announced on Monday due to issues in preparing the result of one union council. The results, as is customary in Pakistan, sparked a deluge of rigging allegations, and the PTI and JI both questioned the results for various reasons. The PTI, for example, accused the Sindh government and the election commission of misconduct and attempting to tamper with the results. The JI, which was initially leading in the polls, also made a flurry of claims about purposefully delaying the results to manipulate matters. The Grand Democratic Alliance, which failed miserably to counter the PPP’s clout in Hyderabad and the province’s rural districts, also criticised the ECP for enabling the ruling PPP’s manipulation and breach of the code of conduct. All of the claims arise from the delayed publication of findings; if the ECP had disclosed the results on time, there would have been less of a stir. When it comes to polls, there is a trust problem. The ECP might have used technology to reduce human intervention and speed up the compilation of results. The result transmission system (RTS) malfunction in 2018 is still fresh in the public’s mind. In the absence of a transmission system, the ECP was obliged to return to the conventional manual technique of counting votes. For future elections, the election commission should be better governed, more organised, and more transparent. *