The Role of Technology in India's 2024 Elections

 

India's 2024 general elections, commencing on April 19th, are once again setting the stage for a formidable demonstration of democratic spirit and technological sophistication. With the country's nearly 970 million eligible voters called upon to cast their votes, the role of technology remains pivotal in orchestrating the successful execution of the electoral process.

The colossal task of gathering votes from a populace that exceeds the combined voter base America, Europe and Australia combined is a testament to India's logistical prowess. Around one million polling stations have been meticulously established, ensuring adherence to the rule that no voter should have to travel more than 1.2 miles from their home to vote. This network spans across congested urban landscapes to the most secluded rural locations, bridging distances with an array of transportation means that goes beyond the conventional.

For these elections, authorities will deploy some 5.5 million electronic voting machines (EVMs), facilitating a smoother and more secure voting experience. The initiation of the voting process on April 19th sets into motion a carefully structured six-week electoral period where the seven phases of voting cater to different regions systematically.

EVMs, engineered by public sector units under the Election Commission's guidance, represent a monumental step forward from paper ballots. In addition to mitigating the risk of fraudulent activities that were a concern with paper ballots, EVMs have streamlined the voting process by enabling faster, more efficient counting and reducing the likelihood of human error.

With the integrity of elections at stake, VVPAT systems serve as a critical layer of transparency, allowing voters to verify their cast votes. Initially trialed in 2014 and subsequently mandated for all elections post a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, VVPATs accompany all EVMs, their slips subject to meticulous scrutiny. This ensures that a tangible, auditable paper trail complements the electronic count.

Beyond the palpable benefits such as cost savings and expeditious counting, the use of EVMs has fortified election integrity. These machines, devoid of internet capabilities, stand as bastions against cyber threats while providing a reliable, user-friendly interface for India's diverse voter base.

As the final votes are cast and the polling stations close, the EVMs' stored data awaits the nationwide counting process. Votes will be tabulated and cross-verified with VVPAT slips where necessary, ensuring the sanctity of every single vote. India's Election Commission, armed with hi-tech tools and robust procedures, promises to deliver fair and swift election outcomes.

With the votes poised to be counted in the aftermath of the six-week-long electoral marathon, the world is set to witness not just a political transformation, but a landmark event where technology unites a billion voices in the symphony of democracy.

Electronic Voting to Bolster World’s Largest Elections

As India approaches its next general elections, the world turns its eyes to this monumental democratic process, where it is expected that incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi will vie for an unprecedented third term. This electoral contest is not just a measure of political winds, but also a testament to the technological advancements that have revolutionized voting in the world's largest democracy.

When Modi was sworn in as the 14th Prime Minister of India in 2014, the employment of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) had already established itself as the backbone of the Indian electoral framework. Fast forward to the present day, and these devices, developed by the state-owned Electronics Corporation of India and Bharat Electronics, have become emblematic of the country's commitment to election automation.

The introduction of EVMs, which occurred between 1998 and 2001, marked a significant departure from the traditional use of paper ballots. The transformation was aimed at addressing and mitigating the prevalent electoral frauds that marred India's electoral integrity, such as booth capturing and ballot stuffing.

Studies and observational data over the years have consistently provided evidence that EVMs have successfully curbed fraudulent practices, notably reducing the incidence of false ballots and rejection rates due to unclear marking that were common with paper ballots.

EVMs have been instrumental in elevating the inclusivity of the electoral process. Post-poll surveys have shown a notable increase in turnout among vulnerable populations—including women, the elderly, and less-educated voters—pointing towards the empowering nature of the technology.

Despite the progress election administration has seen since the introduction of the technology, concerns about the integrity of India’s EVMs have been raised by experts. Madhav Deshpande, a prominent figure in the technology community, points out the vulnerabilities inherent in EVM technology, which, although not connected to the internet and hence not hackable, still leave room for manipulation. These concerns stem from the fact that EVMs are based on older technology that has not kept pace with advancements, leading to gaps that could potentially be exploited.

In the upcoming elections, with 900 million voters anticipated to participate, India's electronic voting system will again be at the forefront, consolidating its status as the standard and preferred method for conducting elections in the country. EVMs, with their proven track record, are set to play a pivotal role in what is to be the largest democratic exercise in history.

The continued growth of remote e-voting in India

As the world's second largest country by population and the world's largest democracy overall, India certainly faces more than its fair share of bureaucratic and logistical challenges in addressing the needs of its citizens. The economy is growing and jobs are being created, but living conditions for many Indian residents continues to be wearisome. And with this many people anxious to have their voices heard for how to move the country forward, capturing their intentions on Election Day can be a logistical and administrative nightmare.

One strategy that has been making significant progress in recent years is the rising adoption of electronic voting technology, particularly as it pertains to the possibility of an Internet-based online voting solution. It has been said by the Central Election Commission that a new e-voting system will be introduced soon and this will help significantly with reducing or even eliminating the issues surrounding extraordinarily long queues on voting day.

The appeal of being able to cast a ballot online is multi-faceted, going beyond the convenience of avoiding long lineups on Election Day. The simple convenience of being able to vote from home or even on a mobile device is undeniable, as is the ease of access for people who may have geographic or physical challenges to overcome. This should help with improving voter turnout too.

What's more, it's said that voting online would help to mitigate issues related to the intimidating attempts made by “goons paid for by the local leaders” that have become a problem at voting places.

The benefits for the government and for the electoral commission cannot be understated either, by reducing the wastage of paper and other resources that are needed to run a more physically-oriented election.

This all sounds very good, but it's also increasingly clear that much more work remains to be done. The e-voting and online voting solution appears to be working, but the registration process for i-voting has been nothing short of a catastrophic debacle. The Gujarat Congress issued a statement decrying the lack of adequate preparation on the part of the State Election Commission in its execution of the online voting system.

More specifically, it says that some 20,000 citizens “had registered for online voting, but necessary details for registrations were not timely shared with them by SEC.” While the SEC had sent the required usernames and passwords to registrants, the required weblink was not included. What's more, because of further technical complications and challenges, registered voters could not even complete the activation of the e-voting process.

The logistics of the situation were further exacerbated as the convenience of voting from home was nullified. Registrants were told to visit a local office in person to complete a verification form, but upon arrival, they were told to go to the magistrate office for even further verification. This is no longer convenient at all and, as such, more preparation in preparing the infrastructure for e-voting and i-voting is clearly required.

All is not lost and other democracies around the world can look to India to address problems with their own e-voting and i-voting systems in a more pre-emptive manner. Moving forward, India endeavors to make it easier for non-residents to vote online too and the recent mandates toward this goal should spur on further progress and development. 

School in Northern India embraces the future of e-voting

A lot has been said about bolstering the level of political engagement among today's youth. Many young people from all around the world can feel as if they have been disenfranchised, ignored by the current politicians who focusing much more on the needs and issues of the older demographic. Many youth can feel as if the political climate is irrelevant and corrupt, feeling as if their actions, their voices and their votes simply do not matter. This needs to change, as today's youth will be tomorrow's leaders.

Interest in politics and the democratic process must start from a young age, engaging the fertile minds of children and teenagers. Just as there has been an increased push in encouraging children to participate in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects, there should be a similar push to get them involved in the present and the future of the political process. And for a lot of today's youth, this means that the political process must also be modernized and brought up to speed with current technology. The traditional paper ballot can feel archaic and irrelevant, while e-voting processes can feel relevant and meaningful.

And indeed, this philosophy has been wholeheartedly supported by at least one school in Northern India. At the DC Model Senior Secondary School in Sector 7, Panchkula in the Northern area of India, students were able to elect their school council representatives using modern electronic voting technology. Candidates made their speeches in front of the student body, convincing them why they should be elected into student government. The students, as well as non-teaching staff, were then able to exercise their democratic right by e-voting.

The political process used at this secondary school is not unlike the e-voting systems used in formal governments in places such as Estonia. The voting students had their identities authenticated using their I-cards and then proceeded to cast their digital ballot. It is important to instil this interest in the power and responsibility of the vote in young people so they can best participate in local, state and federal government when they become of age too.

As the world's single largest democracy, India is also home to a growing number of young people who are passionate about and engaged in the political process. The electorate in India is youthful and tech-savvy and the democratic process needs to mirror and support this growing desire for modern technology. Voters should be able to register in an electronic manner, just as they should be able to cast their ballots digitally and the ballots should be counted electronically too. The entire process can benefit greatly from the intelligent and well-audited implementation of technology. Even for Indians who are living abroad, remote e-voting infrastructure should be in place.

Several key lessons can be taken away from the recent experience of the senior secondary school in Panchkula and these can be applied to other schools all around the world.

First, the political atmosphere of the school should be one that encourages meaningful and respectful political discourse among its students. Public speeches and debates empower the candidates to define and express their platform.

Second, the vote does not need to be collected through the more traditional means of raising hands or submitting paper ballots. Embracing e-voting technology is more efficient, more cost-effective, and more relevant for today's youth.

Third, this also demonstrates that if a humble school in India can afford to implement a robust and reliable e-voting system, there is no reason why proper governments and electoral commissions cannot do the same.

The future of politics is in the hands of today's young people. Let's arm them with the technology they need and desire for the safest, most secure, and most engaging democratic process possible.

Sri Lanka waits for electoral automation

Photo: S Baker

The advantages of e-voting do not go unnoticed by neighbors of countries that have successfully automated their electoral system. One example of this is Sri Lanka, which has been aware of the advantages brought by the implementation of voting technology in India, and now expects to adopt electronic voting as well.

India is one of the leading countries in the use of electoral technology. For almost two decades, it has been showing the world that a country with more than a billion people, and with extreme conditions for its electorate, can carry out elections with utmost reliability and speed. Moreover, the nation is planning to add printed vote receipts to enhance the auditability of its democratic processes. The use of electoral technology has proven to foster citizen participation in younger crowds, as they are coming up with new ways to incorporate it into their lives.

With the adoption of electoral technology, India set an example that was quickly followed by other countries, such as Nepal. Since the positive experience with e-voting is spreading throughout Asia, Therefore, it is not surprising at all that India’s neighbor, Sri Lanka, is now conducting campaigns advocating for the incorporation of e-voting into its electoral system. Since 2010, the Water Supply and Drainage Minister of the country, Dinesh Gunawardene, has been announcing that the government is taking steps toward the automation of the electoral system. He states that the central government acknowledges how easy it is to vote using machines and how e-voting “eradicates corruption and reduces delays in releasing results.” The cost-effectiveness of electoral automation has also been highlighted. However, implementation has taken longer than estimated, and the people are growing restless.

There are already groups on Facebook and Twitter accounts championing vote automation for Sri Lanka. The country is now just waiting for voting machines to be borrowed from India to conduct a demonstration and make the final decision, as it cannot subsist anymore on the unbearably long ballot papers that have been produced in recent elections. 

Sri Lankans are more than prepared to adopt e-voting now because they have been witness to its benefits for years. The country already has the political will and the enthusiasm of the citizenry to back automation, so the only thing missing is for the nation to take the final step. This way, Sri Lanka will enter the elite of countries where democracy is easier and more reliable, and where the will of the people is entirely reflected on their electoral results. We are hoping that that final leap is made very soon.

Assembly Elections in Gujarat are decisive for India’s future

Narendra Modi. Photo: Yahoo! News.

Voters in the states of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh closed the Indian electoral calendar this year with the election of their legislative state assemblies in December. Gujarat’s election was particularly noteworthy, as BJP candidate Narendra Modi was seeking his third consecutive term in office as chief minister. 

More than 71% of Gujarat's 40 million eligible voters cast their ballots, which shows the great interest citizens have taken in deciding the fate of their country. Since 2007, voter turnout has been in the rise in the South Asian nation, as Indians now believe that locally made decisions contribute greatly to the robustness of the country. In a large and diverse country, the idea of nationhood comprising regional parties with their own cultures is “far better than trying to impose everything from the center”, says Yogendra Yadav, election analyst. This idea underlines the importance of this year’s assembly elections, as Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi is forging his way from the Gujarat assembly all the way up to the Prime Minister’s seat. 

With almost 50% of the votes, Modi was denied the landslide victory he was seeking, but he was nonetheless named Gujarat’s chief minister for the third time in a row. His party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), obtained 115 out of 182 seats in the assembly. Mr. Modi has been ruling the state since 2001, and this renewed appointment at the assembly paves the way for him to run for Prime Minister in 2014. Although not everyone agrees with the progress that has characterized his government —the modernization of infrastructure has been a key point in his mandate—, his repeated victory proves that he could have a great chance to propagate the renovation policies implemented in Gujarat over the rest of India. 

Speaking of modernization, it is worth mentioning that India has been using voting technology since 1999, which makes democracy highly efficient for a country with about one billion people and hundreds of millions of votes to tally. Incidentally, Gujarat was the first state to experiment with Internet voting in 2011.

E-voting Technology Development, in the Hands of the Youth

A group of engineering students in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh came up with a system that could drastically change the way locals exert their right to suffrage. This new technology would allow people to either register and vote from their mobile phone through text messages or get a unique ID and password to cast their ballot from their personal computer.

The system was developed as a response to the low participation percentages shown by the educated urban class. “Our system is intended to provide flexibility to such people to vote, contributing to a matured mandate,” said Karj Soma Sekhar, project leader, who is only 21 years old. The students have been demonstrating their invention in different college events and would welcome any opportunity to bring it to the Indian electoral authorities. 

This is not the first time that Indian youths work to have technology broaden the scope of citizen participation in local elections. In 2005, a group of engineering students from the city of Pune envisioned a voting system based on biometric authentication, much like the one used in Venezuela nowadays. India implemented e-voting in 1999. But given the fact that biometric authentication has been a fairly recent adoption worldwide —Venezuela’s Integrated Authentication System (SAI) will be used nationwide for the first time this year—, these students’ vision is truly remarkable. 

In a very prophetic manner, Abhishek Bhalerao, one of the team members was quoted as saying, "If India is to be a developed country by 2020, this system will be a must.” Seeing Venezuela’s progress in voting technology matters, we can say that Bhalerao was absolutely right. 

The emphasis young people are putting on technology, as a means to foster citizen participation, is a clear demonstration of the bright future of electronic voting. “With urban India growing and more people coming under the techno savvy class, the concept of electronic voting makes great sense,” stated Jayaprakash Narayan, president of the Lok Satta party. 

On a slightly unrelated note: faith in e-voting isn’t just a thing of the youth. It has been so successful in India that it is spreading to neighboring countries. Pakistan is planning to use electronic voting machines (EVM) for its next general elections. . Muhammad Afzal, spokesman from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), declared, “With Pakistan, India and Bangladesh having similar cultures, all should help each other. We must learn from each other. We are trying to use EVMs in our elections.”

India, the natural migration towards paper trail voting machines

In May 2004, the world’s largest democracy conducted its first automated national elections using approximately one million Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) to allow 671 million voters express their preference. This event was the culmination of a long and progressive adoption process that started in 1977.

The Direct-Recording Electronic Voting Machines used, were developed by a public sector company, the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), with the purpose of bringing higher levels of transparency and accuracy to elections.

In spite of the considerable benefits automation brought forth to this nation, since February 2010, the Indian Electoral Commission has been receiving complaints from different activists groups, political parties, and researchers who challenge the system’s precarious security features. Their main argument has been the EVMs’ vulnerability to tampering at stages such as: the moment the software that runs them is burned onto their chips, while the machines are stored before an election, and during the period between the voting and the tallying.

These same detractors of the technology used in India consider that, by providing a Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), the problem could be solved. The VVPAT represents a simple mechanism that allows contrasting the electronic results with the manual counts of the paper trail. Any candidate, in the event of a suspicion of tampering, could request a recount on the basis of the paper records. One such system was developed by the world leader in electronic voting Smartmatic and has been used, with great results, in Venezuela and other countries since the year 2004. In fact, Venezuela’s 2004 presidential recall referendum constituted the first election in the world in which a printed receipt was produced by the machine with each vote.

To comply with the growing request for transparency, Indian electoral authorities demanded their two EVMs suppliers, government-run Bharat Electronics Ltd and Electronics Corp. of India Ltd, to adapt the voting machines and include the printing of a paper record. The printed receipt will allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results.

In the last few months, field tests have already been conducted with unsatisfactory results. According to analysts and authorities, approximately one in 20 votes polled in Delhi, one of the four places where the pilot poll was conducted, did not have a corresponding paper ballot. Such a high level of discrepancies has prompted authorities to delay the implementation of EVM with VVPAT in real elections until more satisfactory results are achieved in the field tests.

India, together with Brazil and the United States, were pioneers in the adoption of voting technology. With a voting population of 714 million, representing 23% of the entire voting population of the world, India needs to migrate towards VVPAT to keep up with the citizens’ demands.

India Tests E-Voting System Under Extreme Conditions

What better way to demonstrate the viability, reliability, and security of an electronic voting system than to put this system through its paces in the second most heavily populated country in the world? That is precisely what is being planned, as a prototype of an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) with a verifiable paper trail is set to be tested in 200 locations all around India. This series tests is scheduled to take place by the middle of July.