Opposite parties flay EC’s remote voting plan

Subject :Polity

Context:

At a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice, the parties questioned the EC’s logic in remote voting plan which would increase voting percentage.

Remote Voting Plan

It will allow electors to vote from faraway cities without going to the designated polling station of their constituencies.
The voters will have to reach a designated venue during a pre-decided period of time to be able to use this facility.
The IIT-Madras is developing a system for two-way remote voting in a controlled environment using blockchain technology.
It would entail voter identification and authorisation on the Electoral Registration Officer Network (ERO Net) using biometric data and web cameras for authentication, followed by a blockchain-based e-ballot generation, which would convert into a vote once the hash code would be generated on its execution.
The encrypted remote votes cast would once again be validated at the pre-counting stage to ensure that they have neither been decrypted nor tampered with or replaced.

International perspective:

Countries such as the United States, Argentina, Russia, Estonia, Thailand and South Korea in the past have utilised the blockchain methods for conducting voting processes for their citizens, with a fair share of positives and negatives deriving consequentially.

Postal voting or ballots

It is also called Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot Papers (ETPB) and under this ballot papers are distributed electronically to electors and are then returned to the election officers via post.
Who can avail this facility?
Members of the armed forces like the Army, Navy and Air Force, members of the armed police force of a state (serving outside the state), government employees posted outside India and their spouses are entitled to vote only by post.
While prisoners are not allowed to vote, people under preventive detention can cast their votes through postal ballots.
Special voters such as the President of India, Vice President, Governors, Union Cabinet ministers, Speaker of the House and government officers on poll duty have the option to vote by post.
Recently, a new category of ‘absentee voters’ was introduced in which they can also opt for postal voting.
These voters are employed in essential services and unable to cast their vote due to their service conditions.
Currently, officials of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, Northern Railway (Passenger and Freight) Services and media persons are notified as absentee voters.

Proxy voting

Under proxy voting, a registered elector can delegate his voting power to a representative.
This was introduced in 2003 for elections to the Lok Sabha and Assemblies but on a limited scale.
Only a “classified service voter” which includes members of the armed forces, BSF, CRPF, CISF, General Engineering Reserve Force and Border Road Organisation is allowed to nominate a proxy to cast a vote on his behalf in his absence.