@prashanthamine
Mumbai: “Stay away from Blockchain voting; the advantages of Blockchain are mostly different than what you need for voting. In the US, remote voting is done mostly by mail. The voter can request that a ballot be mailed to him, which he can fill out and return”, this is how Ronald L Rivest @ Ron Rivest (74), a Cryptographer from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reacted when this reporter asked him for his views on the Election Commission of India (ECI) doing a Webinar on use of Blockchain technology to facilitate Remote Voting for migrant population.
The ECI in association with Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) had organised a day long Webinar on “Technology Aspects of Remote Voting: Exploring Blockchain” on August 10.
Barring a few technical experts working with government bodies, most of the global experts who were invited to participate in the day long Webinar advocated caution in the use of the hackable tech tool. Most of the experts wanted the tool to be tested out first in elections to cooperative societies, sports associations or at best local panchayat elections.
In order to bring the debate to the stand-point of the Commission, V N Shukla consultant at ECI argued that some of the panelists were confusing between Internet Voting and Remote Voting. He argued that the new system should be a leveraged system, mixture of powers that ensure security of data base, easy to use interface and powers that can be gradually increased.
Taking part in the Webinar, Director IIT Madras, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi argued that there should not be any drastic changes in the election process, the e-booth and the polling booth should be the same as what is being used today. He emphasised the need for maintaining secrecy of the ballot at all times.
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Pitching for the use of Blockchain in Remote Voting, ECI Secretary General, Umesh Sinha stated that the 2019 Lok Sabha elections marked the highest voter turnout of 67 percent. But many voters that include migrant voters from West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Bihar, seasonal migrants, students migrating for higher studies elsewhere could not vote.
Referring to the online voting in Estonia, Sinha argued that these days nobody wants to stand in long queues to vote. He said that the poll body was looking at a tech tool whereby the e-postal ballot could be sent to the remote voter through e-mail or by post, the voter signing it and getting it back.
Jayesh Ranjan, secretary Information Technology (IT) government of Telangana stated that in order to use the tech tool in remote voting via smart mobile phones, the mobile device will have to be pre-registered. He however, favored trying out the technology first in small elections and then scaling it up.
Gustav Poola, CEO of Levercode from Estonia pointed out that Estonia began using Internet voting before the Blockchain technology was invented. He too also stressed on the need for ensuring security of the process and understanding the social aspect and measuring its impact. He added that there needs to be authentication in place to gain trust right from the source to its destination.
Monique Bachner of International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications, Luxemborg while pointing to the fears about the process, favored trying it out in local elections, eliminate the threats and then try it out on a bigger scale.
Taking part in the debate, Tanvi Ratna of Policy 4.0 revealed that the Russian’s did use Blockchain recently in presidential voting in June and within 20 minutes of the voting, the hackers had decrypted all the keys of Blockchain and the personal voting choice and other data of the voters was up for grabs. She argued that the concern is about Cyber security, coercion, undue influence in voting or voting under duress. She added that there are limitations to the technology.
Her contentions over the Russian vote were seconded by Dr Pandurang Kamat of Persistent Systems, Goa. He argued that India is not yet ready for this technology based voting. While Jatin S Chandnani reiterated his contention that technology here is just an enabler. He added that one of the tech tools in Blockchain and it is all about command and controlling the risk.
Santosh K Misra from TNeGA initially harped on the mobile penetration into the society. But later he too argued that the system needs to be first tried out in in sports body elections where it should be glitch free and the technology is scalable. Jatin S Chandnani of IBM pointed to the fact that there are six different identification cards which are used for authentication purposes.
Rajesh Dhuddu, head Cyber security at Tech Mahindra pointed out that as per 2011 Census about 450 million people migrate in India for work, study, out of which 50 million do inter-state migration. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, nearly 2.8 million of them exercised the postal or mail vote option.
Taking part in the debate Director of Ecosystem, Hyperledger, Marta Piekarsa-Geater a Polish based in United Kingdom, pointed out that in the 2016 US Presidential elections a bunch of votes had disappeared. She added that there are several issues involved – the cost, security, technology and hackers trying to hack the system.
Chandra Bhushan Kumar, ECI deputy election commissioner (Reforms) argued that ECI uses technology to overcome problems. He added that 32 percent of the voters are left out of the electoral system and the way to overcome that was Blockchain enabled voting.
However, Prof. Trilochan Sastry, Chairman of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) red-flagged the issue arguing that the biggest problem that migrant labourers from states like Bihar, UP, West Bengal face in cities of South India is the language barrier. Most of them do not know the local language and can be prone to manipulation and attempts at fraudulent registration.
Noted Advocate and expert on Cyber law and e-Commerce too argued that the country is still not ready for Blockchain as there are serious legal issues regarding recognition and legal provisions. He argued that the existing laws do not have adequate provisions to deal with Blockchain technology and its application and called for a separate new law to deal with the tech tool.
Advocate Nappinai N S and founder of Cyber Saathi argued that nearly 43 percent of women in India do not have access to the Internet. The problem in using tools for authentication and verifiability is that an intrusive tech tool will be used which will be in violation of personal privacy. She wanted to know as to how the process will reassure the voter that his vote so cast is not going to be revealed, that it is not going to be lost in transition. She added that the trust factor here is being overlooked and added that after the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) came, the country now has a paper trail.
In his keynote address, ECI Election Commissioner, Sushil Chandra disclosed that although the highest voting percentage of 67.4 percent was recorded in 2019 Lok Sabha polls in which 910 million voters participated, 613 million voters were left out of the poll process. He too admitted to the need to remove the doubts in the mind of the voter that his vote is secret and it is safer to vote. Chandra further disclosed that in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Army, Navy and other Para-military forces who cannot go to their native constituencies to cast their vote were for the first time given the option of e-Ballot.
Sandra Ro of Global Blockchain Council in her remarks urged the authorities to take care of the erosion of trust amongst the stakeholders and the need for safeguards to protect the data. Taking part in the debate, Dr C Mohan, ex-IBM and Almaden Fellow wondered whether Blockchain technology could be suitable for use in elections in a country like India.
Dr Sanjay Bahl, Director General of Computer Emergency Response Team.in (CERT.in) argued that there are security issues involved in the use of mobile devices, laptops and even Apps. He added that bad actors will be lurking in the system which could prevent one from casting his vote, expose your vote and even manipulate your vote. Abhishek Singh, CEO of MyGov and NeGD government initiatives admitted that the level of awareness about technology is not much in India at the moment. While, Gokul Alex, CTO of Beyond Identity start-up favored phase wise implementation of the Blockchain technology in the election process.
R S Gopalan, deputy director general, UIDAI (Aadhar) while advocating the use of Aadhar for use in biometric authentication process in the Blockchain technology pointed to the presence of hackers in the cyber space and the need for designing a foolproof system for Remote Voting. While Dr Ramesh Ramadoss co-chair, IEEE stated that even though after using Blockchain paper record will have to be maintained. He added that one will have to decide as to what part of the election process needs to be moved to the Blockchain, how to ensure that nobody gets to tamper with the process.
Summing up the seven hour marathon debate on the Webinar, ECI’s deputy election commissioner, Ashish Kundra stated that there is a desirability of moving ahead and what is the technology that shall instill the trust amongst the voters. He argued that no other country in the world has been able to harness technology on such a scale and try to conduct elections using technology.
