Future elections in Telangana could witness a major change in the voting process, with the state government gearing up for a dry run of the first-ever smartphone-based e-voting system in the country.
About E-Voting
The system allows voters to cast their ballots through their mobile phones, by downloading an application.
The initiative for the e-voting system was taken by the Telangana State Election Commission (TSEC), and implemented with support from the Emerging Technologies Wing of the state’s IT Electronics and Communications Department, with technical development by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC).
The mobile application will carry out a three-factor authentication of valid voters using artificial intelligence.
This includes matching voters’ names to their Aadhaar cards, live detection of individuals and matching their image with the EPIC (electoral photo identity cards) database with records dating back to 15 to 20 years.
Further, Block-chain (Distributed Ledger) technology has been used to secure the de-identified and encrypted votes so that they are maintained as immutable records.
Challenges
In a country where EVM technology, VVPAT technology (something that we pioneered in and in use after 40 years of experimentation) is being challenged in the Supreme Court, it would be foolish to think something like this would be accepted.
Voting on the internet can be manipulated which is why ECI has not considered it.
When you go to the polling booth, no one knows whom you are voting for. But with such apps, anyone can come home and bribe people or threaten them to vote for a certain candidate. Secrecy cannot be guaranteed at home.
There needs to be a public discussion when such decisions are taken and if the government wants to implement this, a government order should be passed.
And why is the statement on this coming from a government office, should it not be solely Election Commission office? How can a government be so proactively involved in this?
