Central Hall – Digital & Ballot

Mumbai: The government wants to push its Digital narrative, while the Election Commission of India (ECI) wants to push its Digital Ballot narrative. However, recent studies about penetration of the internet in India have revealed that half of the country’s population has no access to the World Wide Web (www) and SmartPhones.

What is even more alarming is the fact that the ECI is pitching for a technological tool like Blockchain which has serious security issues and has been flagged unsafe for use in ushering Digital Ballot by international experts.

The fact that the government wants to connect all the 6 lakh villages and their Gram Panchayats with Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) in the next 1,000 days, means that it is a long haul ahead before we truly usher in a real Digital Revolution.

It is good that the government has at least belatedly realised that it cannot push its Digital narrative until and unless it does not have the infrastructure in place. Moreover, the on-going Corona pandemic has seen a spurt in cyber-crimes like phishing and hacking, raising serious questions about our cyber security infrastructure.

At least Prime Minister Narendra Modi has realised that without having the Broadband connectivity to the last mile, he cannot hope to push through National Education Policy (NEP), National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) and bring other government services on to the Digital platform.

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It is hard to understand as to why then the ECI is pushing at a tech tool like Blockchain to enable the migrant population to cast a Remote Vote. The question is not just about the migrant population which migrates to other regions, states and sometimes even abroad, but also of students engaged in higher studies, government employees and members of the security apparatus.

Countries like the USA and Australia allow its citizens, who cannot cast their vote at the polling booth on the day of polling for valid reasons, to use the option of what is called a ‘Postal Ballot’ or ‘Absentee Ballot’. There are protocols laid down for conduct of Postal Ballot and counting of votes.

At present the ECI does allow Postal Ballot facility to the government employees engaged in its election duty. Since last 2019 elections it has now extended the Postal Ballot facility to the Armed Forces personnel. It has now decided to extend the same facility to senior citizens over the age of 80 years or who are unable to walk to use the facility of postal ballot.

By ECI’s own admission nearly 43 crore population which due to migration and other nature of their work are unable to cast the ballot, which compared to the regular voter who votes at the polling booth is manageable. In such a case, it is difficult to understand why the facility of the postal ballot is not extended to such class of people who because of their nature of work cannot cast their vote at the polling booth.

In the US there is a separate mechanism put in place that takes care of the postal ballot, wherein such voters have to register themselves in advance. In India, postal ballot does come into play after the last date of withdrawal of candidates is over till the date of actual polling. Remote voting using Blockchain could well put in place the government machinery in a perpetual election mode.

People of late have taken fancy at quoting the example of Online voting in Estonia, where people not just vote Online, but have access to other government services as well. Be it Estonia (91%) or for that matter country like Norway (98%) digitization of services is possible because they have a higher percentage of internet penetration and a robust firewall that ensures higher degree of cyber security.

But even then aspersions have been cast over outside interference in the 2016 US Presidential elections, or the alleged hacking of the Russian Presidential vote in June earlier this year. The United Kingdom is legislating to regulate what it calls ‘dark adverts’, online political advertisements.

Regulating political activity online is still not fully foolproof as the supporting Digital infrastructure is not fully in place. Moreover, in a country like India, Digital literacy is far worse than actual literacy. Until and unless a robust, foolproof mechanism is not put in place which reassures the people of its safety parameters, experts are cautioning against using tools that are suspect when it comes to Digitization. That can only be achieved through end point digital connectivity, strong digital firewall and above all digital literacy.