Arab elections and women

From OpinionJournal.com:

The Arab News has an op-ed by Raid Qusti titled "Why Women's Voting Is Complicated," a response to criticisms he heard from Saudi women after an earlier column on the same topic. "To begin with, we need to look at our country as a whole and weigh the reality of things," he writes. "We should look at it rationally and not emotionally." Something tells us this will not placate the ladies. Qusti goes on to explain all the difficulties of letting women vote in the forthcoming local elections:

One of the comments made by a Saudi female, responding to my last article, is that we do not need separate ballot centers for men or women so that sinful mixing could not occur. Instead we could have different voting hours for men and women. Women could come, for example, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. And men could come from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. That way there would be no mixing. Good suggestion.

But employing Saudi women to answer queries from Saudi women is not easy, especially in remote areas. Then of course the problem still exists of finding women who are willing to work in village or small towns. If the women are willing then they would need male escorts to stay with them there, in addition of course to finding male drivers since women are not allowed to drive here.

Hypothetically, let's say all these were resolved. That is, the municipality had given itself enough time to set up everything, even employed women to assigned areas, and everything was set to go. Continuing the hypothesis further, let's say that some Saudi women who registered their names and later nominated themselves as candidates actually won and had become official members of the municipality council. In other words, these women are now officials. . . .

If a single woman won and became a member of the municipality council that would mean the government would have to construct a separate building for her. Whether she is one female, two, or ten, Saudi law forbids men and women to work in the same establishment.

Of course, one could just as easily use this as an argument against men serving in the Saudi government. Anyway, scores of countries, including Muslim lands like Turkey and Indonesia, have somehow mastered the complexity of coed voting. Why is it so hard for the Saudis?