Transition to online voting.. The Election Officer’s view point
Imagine a situation where, as a part of an election office of an organization, have been given the authority and responsibility of conducting the elections.
You definitely want to make sure that the election should be so fair that –
The most, if not all, of the members, cast their votes
No foul play takes place before, during and after the voting process
Real-time results are available with no challenges to the outcomes from anyone, No blame games
Create a feeling of full trust and eliminate the possibility of re-elections
Being an Election officer is a thankless job. If the election goes smooth, everyone normally expects that this is how it should work. However, if something goes wrong, then the Election officer is the first person to take the blame. Organization at large, is usually is oblivious of the complexity that goes into the election process and the administrative success is not adequately appreciated.
There are multiple aspects that you, as an Election officer, need to look into, during this entire journey:
(1). Before the Elections:
It is the duty of the election office to make sure that all valid members are registered as voters. No eligible member should ideally be left out. Every voter should get authenticated ( it could be a simple manual verification or an IT driven method such as an OTP or a biometric ).
All logistic and infrastructural support should be in place. Eg
In case of paper ballots, all ballots should be printed, stored and then taken to the election venue at the right time, by the right individual.
In case of EVMs, all the EVMs should again be calibrated appropriately and then stored and carried to the election venue.
Voters should be educated to cast valid votes. Registration related queries should be resolved sufficiently ahead of the voting.
In case of paper / EVM based voting, resources should be organized and they should also be trained all the time.
Additional trainings should be provided to resolve exceptional issues which might occur during the election process.
and many more…
This is definitely a big burden and a single security flaw, oversight may cascade into completely different outcomes of the elections. Irrespective of size of the election, the election officer still needs to maintain the same secure way to conduct the elections.
How e-Voting can help:
eVoting provides a robust platform to the election officer, that already has in-built measures to meticulously follow all legal steps of conducting elections. The platform can generate unique IDs for the individuals or use citizen UIDs like Aadhaar and stores the information of the votes anonymously in an encrypted format to keep it safe from all. And that includes the product tech team itself!
The platform has dashboards for stake holders. This adds to the transparency and eliminates room for any fraudulent practice or possibility of withholding of information. Unlike paper ballots or EVMs, there is no need to arrange logistics, which further reduces cost/budget and adds more security.
Platform itself can provide alerts and reminders to different individuals (voters, officers etc.) based on their roles to conduct elections in a fair manner. eVoting platform can also keep a track of activities for every individual member’s activities and provide suggestions.
(2). During the Elections:
Election officer needs to make sure the election is safe, that is, there shouldn’t be any unauthorized votes. Poll booth needs to be further secured by police force or guards, in case of large scale elections.
Election officer should promote close to 100% turnover of the voters . He/she should also see, the voter is not hindered to vote by distance, health conditions and natural calamities etc.
Though, paper ballots and EVMs address some of the issues, they are definitely not a convenient way of voting for the voters to encourage maximum turnover.
How e-Voting can help:
eVoting can authorize every voter through OTP or by similar authentication means, right up to biometrics. The platform can further ensure that one voter can cast just one vote. Voters can be reminded of the election process through the reminders generated and would get all the detailed information about casting the vote on D day.
Voter need not be present in the election venue, but can cast from wherever he/she is, irrespective of the location or condition of the voter. Once vote is casted, the platform can provide some notification to the voter that the vote is securely registered. e-Voting platform can then save all these votes by masking the voter’s identity. There could be layers of security which can be provided. This eases up the Election officer’s burdensome task to make sure, every voter turns out and the election is conducted in secure fashion yet completely affordable to an organization of any size.
(3). After the Elections:
It’s one of the daunting tasks to collect all the paper ballots or EVMs after the election is over. Further, isolating invalid paper ballots, making sure no vote is missed / neglected by an individual is a tedious process. The resources required to generate the results and publish the data is in thousands, increasing the budget cost. With so many complexities involved, usually, the results are declared not on the same day of the elections. The election office takes herculean effort to accurately count votes. In case of EVMs carrying the machines involves huge cost and involvement of government machinery that impacts other operations.
Some elections such as preferential voting ,say for example, in State Councils the EVMs are not yet ready for the workflow and manual counting is substantially more complex.
How e-Voting can help:
Results would be stored in the most secured and safe way with latest advanced technologies. No manipulations would be possible.
Results would be available immediately post the elections. With help of the technical team, the election officer can have a great visualization of the results and publish this to public instantly.
ROAD AHEAD:
Of course, the administrative effort of election ceremony as portrayed above, doesn’t apply to very small association with a strength of < 100 members . I refer them as ‘kitty-party-election’, where idea of eVoting itself raises eye brows. Well, for them, election is just a good reason to a get-together. We drop this segment from the eVoting transformation at least for time being.
For other medium and large associations, it will be interesting to map the road ahead for the largest democracy in the world when it comes to digitally transform the electoral processes. Conducting election is a big effort. These associations have started realizing the heat of the election hassles using conventional methods. I bet, the election officers of a 10000+ strong organization with members scattered across a large geography will understand and align with my list of pain points pretty easily.
Apart from elections of Loksabha and a number of Vidhan Sabha, where the election is EVM based, almost 90% or more of the remaining elections are still based on a paper ballot. The 10% of the early birds are switching over to the digital mode but are witnessing challenges of unorganized segment, full of substandard web solutions for a safe election. The digital technology, telecom /mobility advances today, have many solutions to offer but in a haste to go digital, some associations burn their fingers. A typical mistake is to turn to the ‘we-do-anything-for-you’ website services community rather than choosing a mature, robust platform dedicated to e-Voting. Remember a wrong automation will lead you to a wrong destination and that too very fast. An insecure solution may actually act as a catalyst to fraudulent practices!
The time has come to perform a ‘Mindset Change’. When there are means available, like a mature e-Voting platform - PollGateway, that addresses all the concerns; it makes this transformation look very simple and natural.
In the next blog, we will look into the details of our next and perhaps the most important stakeholders to conduct elections: Voters and we will try to see, how eVoting can assist voters to a large extent.