Tech-enabled Voter ID: Don’t Forget To Cast Your Vote As Delhi Goes For Digitised Elections This Yea

Any manually executed work is prone to unforeseen errors. An attempt at the elimination of such errors as much as possible has brought about the digitisation of many activities all over the world. One of these is the process of conducting elections, a process that is central to any democracy in the world. Digitisation of elections is a multi-pronged phenomenon, not limited to the casting of votes, which is actually only a small part of the election process.

The first step includes registering oneself in the electoral roll which is a list of all those people in a particular constituency who are eligible to vote in the elections. The electoral roll is normally revised every year to add the names of those who are not less than 18 on a qualifying date years as on the first day of January of that year, or have moved into the constituency, and to remove the names of those who have died or moved out of the constituency. The Election Commission has undertaken the digitisation of all electoral rolls throughout India, which has led to improvements in the accuracy and speed with which the electoral roll can be updated. In India, till 2002, votes were cast through paper ballots.

However, it was not an effective way of casting votes since the huge amount of illiteracy in the country led to inaccurate marking of the ballots. User-friendly electronic voting machines (EVMs) introduced in 2003 have eliminated this problem; voters now only need to activate a button next to the relevant party logo, widely publicised during election campaigns.With respect to being able to apply online for a place in the electoral roll, or vote through EVMs, India’s election system has been digitised for a long time. However, remote e-voting via the Internet (also called i-voting where voters submit their votes electronically to the election authorities, from any location) is not something that one can usually associate with the Indian election system.

The Delhi elections 2020 is a departure from the status quo. A new concept introduced in this election is that of ‘absentee voters’ which enables voters unable to come to polling stations due to physical reasons, to take part in polls. Disabled persons and senior citizens above 80 years can either vote in person or through postal ballot.

Other than that, the Election Commission (EC) has put the entire voter list online. The poll officials will scan the pre-printed voter slips containing the QR-code to mark the electors’ attendance for casting their votes. Voters (for the first time) can download their digital photo voter slip from ‘Voter Helpline’ app which is available on Google Playstore and Apple app store. Voters are required to link their mobile number with their voter ID card of Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number in order to download the digital photo voter slip. Voters who wish to carry their digital photo voter slip (in voter helpline app) instead of a printed copy will be allowed to carry their mobile phones inside the polling booth but only up to the electoral official who will check and verify the same.

The EC has also suggested the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to forecast the queue length at the polling booths through the Voter Helpline Mobile app. If executed, it will help voters know the best time to go to cast their votes at the polling stations.

Nearly all countries now use digital technology for at least some aspects of election management. Creating and managing voter registers, as well as transmitting and tabulating results have been digitalised in nearly all countries. Conversely, electronic vote-casting has been less universally adopted. In developing democracies, where elections have often been marred by fraud, it is – rightly or wrongly – often seen as a means of ensuring a more credible poll. As a result, voting machines and other electronic voting systems are becoming increasingly widespread in Latin America, as well as in the Middle East and East Asia. In contrast, European countries are more reticent, preferring tried-and-trusted traditional methods, with a manual count of paper ballots to experimenting with potentially unreliable new technologies.

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