On the occasion of National Voters’ Day, on January 25, 2021, the Chief Election Commissioner of India, Sunil Arora, announced that mock trials for remote voting facility for electors were slated to begin soon in India. The Election Commission of India has collaborated with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras to work on this blockchain-based technology which would enable voters to cast their votes from far away cities. With this innovation in voting system, voters would be able to cast their vote without going to a designated polling station of their constituency.

Blockchain-aided remote voting is aimed at making the voting system tamper-proof by making the process more secure and transparent. The two-way electronic voting system will take place in a controlled environment on white-listed IP devices on dedicated internet lines. It would be enabled with biometric devices and a web camera.

In the blockchain method, an online public bulletin board is implemented. This allows for a linear ordering of data to which a user can only append the data. Data creation or removal by the user would not be possible in this process. The users have to sign in using cryptographic signatures to register their votes in a ledger. The voting authority would then authenticate this bulletin board. Thus, a voter’s identity would be established by the system.

To avail the facility of two-way remote voting through blockchain, voters will be required to apply in advance to their returning officers. They will have to reach a designated venue during a pre-decided period of time. Once the voter’s identity is established, then a blockchain-enabled personalised e-ballot paper will be generated. When the voter casts his vote, the ballot would securely encrypt and generate a blockchain hashtag. This hashtag notification would then be sent to various stakeholders including the candidates and political parties.

The encrypted remote votes would once again be validated at the pre-counting stage to ensure that they have neither been decrypted nor tampered or replaced.

For instance, if during a Lok Sabha election, a Chennai voter is in Delhi, then instead of returning to his constituency for voting or missing out on voting, the voter can reach a pre-designated spot set-up by the Election Commission in Delhi, at a particular time window and cast his vote.

Benefits

  • It would increase convenience for voters.
  • It would help people with disabilities or who have trouble moving around to vote.
  • This system is very quick and private way to vote. It would also increase the number of voters since the process would take much lesser time.
  • It would help increase the trust of the people in the electoral process since it is more transparent than the current ballot system.
  • This system is more environment friendly as compared to the paper voting system and would also curtail carbon emitted by the logistics of the ballots.
  • The cost of building this system is considerably less as compared to the cost of running a ballot-based system.

Concerns

In order to become feasible, the blockchain enabled method of voting requires availability of internet in a country to be more than or equal to 90 per cent. India lags behind the desired connectivity and a heavy investment on infrastructure building is needed. Besides internet connectivity, this system would also lead to issues related to complexity in usage and its management.

Blockchain Technology

A blockchain is a digital record of transactions. It links together individual records (called blocks) in a single list called a chain. Blockchain technology is used for recording various transactions and has many other applications. Each transaction added to a blockchain is validated by multiple computers on the internet. These systems are configured to monitor various kinds of blockchain transactions. The multiple computers work together to ensure that each transaction has been validated before it is added to the blockchain. This multiple computer-based decentralised network of computers ensures that a single system cannot add invalid blocks to the chain.

When a new block is added to a blockchain, it is linked to the previous block using a cryptographic hashtag. Cryptography is the science of protecting information by transforming it into a secure format. This process is called encryption. It is used for transforming data into formats that cannot be recognised by unauthorised users. This ensures that the chain is never broken and that a block is permanently recorded. It is very difficult to alter past transactions in a blockchain since all the subsequent blocks have to be altered first.

So far, this technology has been used in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, litecoin, etc. Now, this technology is being used for non-financial purposes also.

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