Smart voting
An alternate approach to vote in the 2019 Indian General Assembly elections.
India has been voting since 1951. It took us another 47 years to make the first move from good old paper ballot to Electronic Voting Machines, and we’ve been using EVMs ever since. While this was exciting technology for 1998 and helped save thousands of tons of ballot paper over the years, it is outdated now with unnecessary cons such as —
- Device cost (₹10,500 or $160 in 2016).
- Need for a Totaliser (which is a still ‘proposed’ change)
- Absence of real-time, secure electronic transmission protocol.
- Limited memory (an EVM can record a maximum of only 3840 votes). While this isn’t a explicit disadvantage, it is a technical shortcoming.
- Security issues. Need for expensive, redundant VVPAT.
It’s high time we look beyond the EVMs.
Enter, Aadhar. The World’s largest and unique biometrics based identification program with a real time online authentication infrastructure. A system akin to the Social Security model in the U.S., only better.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is a statutory authority established under the provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 (“Aadhaar Act 2016”) on 12 July 2016 by the Government of India, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
And the secret sauce, India Stack —
IndiaStack is a set of APIs that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilise an unique digital Infrastructure to solve India’s hard problems towards presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery.
1,326,801,576. This is India’s population as of July`16, roughly 132 Crore (or 1.3 Billion). On 26th Jan`17, UIDAI clocked over 111 Crore (or 1.1 Billion) users, covering over 99% of the Indian adult population.
India Stack provides APIs for authentication and eKYC (Know your Customer) using Aadhar and biometric credentials. This provides a seamless option to authenticate one’s indentity and fetch one’s name, age, address and photograph, and is being widely used across India for services such as instant verification and issue of cellular SIM cards.
The 2019 General elections are around the corner to constitute the seventeenth Lok Sabha. Preparing to employ this service in the elections brings a multitude of advantages —
- Eliminates the need for having a separate voter card, voter registration or even a voter list. All citizens above 18 years of age would be automatically eligible to vote.
- Universal Voting: Since one’s permanent address is a part of their Aadhar, one can vote from anywhere by just visiting their closest election booth (Soldiers, travelers, people working in other cities etc.) or the Indian embassy (Expatriates, NRIs, Students).
- Encourages a much greater voter turnout, thanks to ease of voting. Just over half of India’s population has been voting so far. This also makes the future scope of voting from personal devices feasible (an accessibility solution to the disabled and older citizens), as biometric authentication on phones and laptops become ubiquitous. Making voting more accessible to every citizen is a step towards a better democracy.
- Real-time, secure data transmission can make way for a live votes ticker and ensure instant, verified election results as soon as polling closes. This adds a much needed layer of transparency in the elections and can potentially put an end to inaccurate exit polls (suffering from sampling errors) and counting days.
- Early voting can also increase the voter turout. Countries such as Finland, Norway, Canada and Germany, which have been using early voting, have proven record of higher voting percentages.
- Voting using IndiaStack APIs is as secure as performing monetary transactions over the web, which can put an end to claims of stolen EVMs, voter fraud and doubts about EVM security after each election.
- The system also brings the advantage for accurate data collection and analysis of voting trends based on demographics.
- Provides a future-ready platform to make voting a mandated duty with the inclusion of NOTA.
- Is the smart thing to do, in the wake of Digital India & Make in India.
Adopting and adapting to new technology is a matter of time and availability. India has the necessary technology and infrastructure to not only implement biometric voting successfully, but also be a pioneer in going digital and democratizing technology.
