Housing society elections in India is an important part of housing society life. The election in the society is supposed to follow certain rules and procedures. In this blog we intend to explain these rules and procedures.
Note: Most housing societies are formed as cooperative housing societies (CHS) and cooperatives is a state subject in India. Each state has its own Cooperative Societies Act and most of these Act also provides a model byelaw that can be adopted by the housing society in that state. A housing society can adopt its own modified byelaws, but the byelaws should not contradict the Act of that state. There are 28 states and 8 union territories in India and rules might differ from state to state. However, most of these state Acts have been based on THE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES ACT, 1912 and are more of less similar. However, we request our readers to use this blog for general guidance. They should refer the following documents for legal purpose:

1. Your society Byelaw – Every society has one. Ask your managing committee to provide a copy to you. It is your right, and nobody can deny you access to the society byelaws.
2. Your state Cooperative Society Act – Link to few states’ Cooperative Society Act is provided below for your convenience:
   1. Maharashtra
   2. Karnataka
   3. Delhi
   4. Tamil Nadu
   5. West Bengal

Key points to note regarding housing society elections in the byelaw:

1. Voting rights of owners: All members who own property in the housing society generally have voting right. No member should be denied voting right. Generally, the first owner is supposed to exercise the voting right, however co-owners can also be allowed to vote.
2. Equal voting right: Generally, each member owning a property in the housing society has equal voting right. Generally, member having a bigger flat, say 3BHK, does not get higher voting weightage compared to a person owning a smaller flat, say 2BHK. However, generally, a person owning two flats in the society gets 2 votes. Votes are generally based on number of units and not number of members.

In exceptional societies, formed as limited liability company instead of cooperative, at times they have differential voting rights bases on size of the unit. Right2Vote eVoting platform provides options to create all kind of elections including with weightage based on number of units and weightage based on size of the flat.

3. Denial of voting rights: Byelaw might mention that members who have not paid their society dues in full, might be barred from voting.
4. Voting right of tenant: Generally, tenants do not have voting right. The voting right for each flat is restricted to the owner of the flat.
5. Voting window: A voter must be provided a reasonable voting window to enable him to vote. Keeping a very short voting window is restrictive and can lead to members complaining that they were denied their right to vote. We recommend minimum voting window of 8 hours if all your voters are located in India and minimum 24 hours if your members are residing abroad to provide for different time zones. Generally, we have seen many societies keeping a short voting window of less than 2 hours, which can lead to legal issues.
6. Reasonable notice of election date and voting window: All voters should be provided advance notice about the elections. Generally, the practice is to provide minimum 14-day advance notice. However, it can differ from society to society based on the bye law.
7. Intimation of election date and process: A society need to provide advance intimation to members about the intention to conduct election and invite nominations for various posts. This is generally done minimum 21 days in advance of the election date. The society also needs to circulate the rules and procedure for nomination and election process.
8. Right to stand in elections: All owners / members have equal right to stand in elections. No owner can be denied right to stand in elections unless:
1. The owner title of the property is in dispute.
2. The owner has not paid all society dues in full.
9. Election method – Online voting Vs Paper ballot: The Acts or the model bye laws generally have kept silent on the election method and hence paper based voting and online voting – both methods can be used for voting. Show of hands is generally not advisable specially when ‘Secret ballot’ is a requirement. Refer this blog for more details on this topic.
10. Secret ballot: Most State Cooperative Act and model byelaws mention that election of members should be done via secret ballot. Secret ballot means, that nobody, not even the election officer should come to know which member voted for which candidate. This is to ensure secrecy of member’s vote so that member can vote with his free will and there is no chance of coercion.
11. Proxy voting: Most Act and model bylaws mention that ‘member should vote in person’. This means proxy voting is not allowed. It should not be confused with requirement of physical presence of voter. It only means that voter cannot abdicate his right and responsibility of voting to somebody else. Proxy voting clause differ from society to society, please check your byelaws carefully for the same.
12. Postal voting: Many Acts and bye-laws specifically provide for option of postal voting where members can send their vote via post. However, considering limited timelines of election, postal voting is generally not feasible and online voting is a preferred option for voters who are residing elsewhere or who are travelling.
13. Election of Committee Members: Rules differ in model byelaws relating to election of committee members. In few states like West Bengal, the standard practice is that members vote to elect the committee members and the committee members among themselves decide who would take the title of President, Treasurer, Secretary etc. In Other states like Karnataka, members vote directly to appoint specific candidates to post of President, Treasurer, Secretary etc. Few members are also elected as committee member. Right2Vote’s eVoting platform provides feature of ‘Team Election – Exact’ and ‘Team Election – Upto’ to help societies elect team of committee members from the same list of candidates. You should check your byelaw to check whether voters are allowed to select exact number of candidates or they can select less than the number of post. Right2Vote platform provides both customizations. Most other platforms do not have this feature.

 
Election Schedule checklist and timeline
 
For the benefit of members, we have provided below a checklist and timeline for elections. Readers can customize based on their society bye-laws and convenience of the members:

 
Voting on resolutions during Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM)
Voting of members are required even on resolutions during AGMs and EGMs. It is better to conduct online voting for voting on resolutions and provide members with minimum 24 hours to vote on these matters. Generally, secret ballot is not compulsory for voting on resolutions unless resolutions are very sensitive and members foresee risk of coercion.

 
Passing of resolutions by just show if hands in meeting is avoidable due to following reasons:

1. It is difficult to keep record of such voting. Later, any member can challenge the result in court. It would be difficult to provide evidence. With online voting – proper evidence and record is maintained and can be presented in court.
2. In show of hands, counting of votes can lead to mistake.
3. At times, more than one member from a family is present in the meeting. This can lead to double counting.
4. In show of hands, and verbal communication of resolution, there are chances of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
5. There might be members who are attending the meeting over video conference / remotely.

 
Conclusion: The best way to conduct an election or voting on resolution is to do it online on a Government of India approved eVoting platform. This ensures no member is denied his right to vote specially those who are resident in some other city. All members should be given advance intimation and reasonable voting window. Features like Secret Ballot and Audit Trail should be used to ensure fairness and transparency. Online voting system also ensures presence of hard evidence which can be submitted to authorities, if required. This reduces chances of any litigation in future.

Trade unions or employee associations are associations of employees of a particular trade. These are organizations with a democratically elected management committee that represents all employees in negotiations with employers and help employees as well as employers to maintain a balanced relationship between them. The unions have gained ground due to the rapid industrial development. The workers around the world have come together to create employee associations in their respective organizations that would give them a proper ground to fight for better wages and working conditions.

The History of Trade Unions in India:

The industrial workforce in India began in the second half of the Nineteenth century after multiple clothing and textile mills were established in the port cities of Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai.  Bombay Mill-Hands Association, founded by the father of the Indian Trade Union Movement, N.M. Lokhande in 1890 is presumably the first Indian workers association. The first registered and organized Trade Union in India is considered to be the Madras Labour Union in 1918, founded by B.P. Wadia.

Union Election and its Problems: 

Every five years, Trade unions hold elections by ballots to fill certain governing positions. Following the respective rules, any member of the union can stand for any respective statutory position, depending on his eligibility. The trade union elections are generally held by booth-based paper ballot and/or postal ballot.  In the case of postal ballots, the trade union sends the voting papers inside a pre-paid envelope to the voters in their respective homes together with small statements written by the candidates. The voters send back the papers to an unbiased independent person, appointed by the trade union, who would count the votes accurately.

 The major problem faced by the employee association is the amount of corruption that happens around these elections. As the entire process is time-consuming and human-dependent, it’s quite easy to plant the seeds of corruption inside without getting caught or noticed.  Apart from that, the paper-ballot voting is extremely expensive, as reams of paper need to be printed and send to the respective voters. It not only costs a lot of money but also takes a lot of time to conclude the entire process. As the entire process is human-dependent, small human errors are inevitable too.

How Technology Can Solve These Problems? 

Trade unions hold multiple elections based on the structure and size of the organizations. The process can get really complicated due to the involvement of a large number of people in various groups. Implementing online voting technology can reduce the complexity and help manage the entire process with ease.

Less Time Taking:

Online Voting websites like Right2Vote, don’t require human intervention, and that results in more accurate results and less time-consuming elections. Ballot voting in trade union elections requires a lot of time to print papers, sending of them to the voters, and counting of votes. The fully digitalized online process makes it easy for the voters as well as the employers to conclude the entire process much quicker and more efficiently.

More Private and Secured Voting:

The privacy of a voter can sometimes be compromised in ballot voting, as the entire process is human-dependent. Online voting through smart devices can dismiss the chances of outside influence, making the process more secure and transparent for the voters. This fully automated system assures the voter that the vote details remain only with the voter and guarantees accurate results in the election.

Cost-Effectiveness: 

The cost behind postal services and printing lacs of papers are reduced as voters will only need to use a smartphone or a device connected to the internet to cast their votes. The cost behind appointing people who were needed earlier to do certain works can also be reduced. The process excludes the involvement of a third person who used to count votes and it not only cut down the cost but also makes the process smoother.

Maximizing Participation of the Voters:

Online voting apps such as Right2Vote can ensure more involvement, as voters living at a certain distance can always use a smart device to cast their votes. Using an online voting system, a lot of voters who couldn’t cast their votes previously can easily use this technology to cast their respective votes. The process is easier and definitely a better way to cast votes in complete secrecy.

Insolvency and bankruptcy code is nothing but a mechanism of settling failed or bankrupt entities without causing damage to any players of the economy. The code was passed by the parliament as a welcome gesture that overhauls the existing framework dealing with insolvency of corporations, individuals and partnerships. It paves way for the much-needed reforms while focusing on creditor driven insolvency resolution.

Measures were taken by the government of India-

Recognising that reforms in bankruptcy and insolvency regime are critical for improving and improvising the business ambience, the government took up the onus of introducing this bill. The bill was introduced in November 2015, drafted by specially constituted bankruptcy law reforms Committee (BLRC) under the ministry of finance. After being drafted, it was recognised by the joint committee of parliament. Both houses of parliament finally allowed the bill to come into effect on 2016.

Applicability of the code-

The provision of the code shall apply for insolvency along with liquidation, voluntary liquidation and bankruptcy of the following.

🗸Any organisation incorporated under the companies act, 2013 or under any previous laws.
🗸Any limited liability partnership under LLP act 2008
🗸Partnership firms and individuals

The objective of the code-

The objective is very simple. It complies for a sound legal framework of bankruptcy law that is required for achieving transparent targets. It allows for improving and improvising the handling of conflicts between creditors and debtors. What it does is, it provides certainty about the process of negotiation, in such a way to decrease problem amongst common property and decrease the information asymmetry.

It also controls the macroeconomic downturns and makes things simple and approachable. It will help you to consolidate and amend laws relating to reorganisation and insolvency, partnership firms and individuals.

The pivotal characteristics of the code-

Resolution of the insolvency-

The insolvency and bankruptcy code 2016 lay down separate insolvency resolving methodologies for organisations, individuals along with partner organisations. It is possible to initiate the procedure either through the creditors or the debtors.

What the code does is, it lays down a maximum time frame for completion of insolvency resolution. The entire modus operandi needs to be completed within the time frame of one hundred of eighty days. It can later be stressed to ninety days only. It can be done only when the large percentage of creditors permit or agree.

Regulator of insolvency-

The code lays down that the insolvency and bankruptcy board of India shall oversee the proceedings relating to insolvency in the nation. They regulate all organisations that are registered by the board. The insolvency and bankruptcy board shall consist of a ten-member team. It includes a representative of law and finance ministries as well as the RBI.

Insolvency and bankruptcy adjudicator-

The code has introduced a couple of district tribunals for overseeing the approaches for resolving insolvency. These are (1) National company law tribunal for organisations and limited liability partnership. (2) Debt recovery tribunal for overseeing insolvency resolution.

Procedures-

An insolvency plea is given to the authority that adjudicates by operation or financial creditors or the corporate debtor. The plea can be accepted or rejected in a maximum time frame of fourteen days. In any case, if the plea gets acceptance then the tribunal will have to appoint an IRP for drafting a plan of resolution within 180 days. Further, the court would initiate the entire process of resolving corporate insolvency.

During this time frame, the top honchos of the company shall remain suspended, whereas the promoters shall have no further say in the management. The IRP can seek the help of the management of a particular company. In case the CIRP is unable to receive the organisation, then a process of liquation shall be a remaining constraint.

Amendments-

Quite a few individuals are obstructed from providing any plan of resolution in case there are any defaulters. Hence the wilful defaulters, management or promoters of the company in case there is any non-performing outstanding debt.

The smooth functioning of the code-

The smooth functioning of the code depends on the functioning of the latest entities such as insolvency professionals. These entities will have to evolve for the proper functioning of the system. Besides, the NCLT will adjudicate corporate insolvency has not been constituted and the DRT’s are overloaded with pending cases.

Bring about far-reaching reforms-

The code promises to bring about far-reaching reforms with a thrust a creditor drove insolvency resolution. It aims to identify financial failure and maximising the asset value of insolvency firms. The code does have a special provision to address cross border insolvency. It can be done through bilateral agreements and reciprocal arrangements with some other countries.

Conclusion-

The intention of the code is doing away with antiquated existing laws covering aspects of insolvency and bankruptcy. Though the code sets out certain provisions to amend and override the existing laws to avoid litigation the days to come, clear provisions are needed. It explicitly states the existing laws being repealed by the introduction of this legislation. Apart from this, the bill also restricts the selling of defaulter’s property to any such individual right at the time of liquidation.

Disclaimer: The content is written by an external author. Right2Vote does not take responsibility for the accuracy or quality of the content.

For the last 2 years I have been trying to convince people that we need to move to mobile based voting system as it has several benefits including:

1. Higher voter turnout
2. Convenient for the voter
3. Cost saving
4. Time saving
5. Human resource saving
6. Instant result

Nobody disputes these benefits but still people are not willing to upgrade to mobile voting because they believe “online voting can be hacked – it is not secure”

I totally disagree with this argument due to following two reasons:

1. The current offline system is at least 100 times more unsecure and is regularly hacked. Still we are living with it.
2. Technology has evolved substantially to ensure that online transactions are safe – extensive use of emails, online banking, stock trading is a proof of that.

Do not agree? Let’s discuss these reasons in detail.

Standard hacking practices in current offline voting system

1. False voting: It’s a common experience that people go to voting booth to realize that somebody has already voted in their place. This happens because in the current system voter authentication happens by looking at the face of the voter and matching it with the photograph in the ID. Booth officials generally accept any government ID card as identity proof. People can impersonate anybody else with help of fake ID cards. This can never happen with Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology due to Aadhaar based authentication. There is no scope of manual errors or cheating. Each voter is authenticated only after checking with Aadhaar central database and fake ID cards are of no use.

2. Duplicate Voting: It’s a common practice that people have their name registered in more than one constituency or more than one booth. At times they have their name registered in the same booth twice also. These fraudulent voters are expert in removing ink mark from their finger and voting again. Many political parties pay these kinds of voters on the basis of number of vote they cast. This can never happen with Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology and Aadhaar based authentication as Aadhaar databank ensures that there are no duplicate records. Any duplicate record would be fished out as person would not be able to fake the bio-metrics.

3. Errors / Manipulation in Counting – Counting of votes specially in paper ballot happens manually and is prone to clerical errors. Several times recounting has provided different results which proves that errors and manipulation are common. This can never happen with Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology as vote counting is 100% automatic and instant. There is no human intervention hence no scope of human error.

4. Vote rejection – Lot of voter’s vote are rejected specially in case of paper ballot and postal ballot due to marking errors, illegible writing, procedural reason etc. In case of postal ballot rejection rate is more than 25%. With Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology all errors are corrected at the time of voting itself, as the voting screen alerts the voter and asks him to correct his mistake. Hence there is ZERO rejection of votes.

5. Booth Capturing – Booth capturing is so common in India that such news goes unnoticed in India. Videos of booth capturing during recent West Bengal local body election is all over the internet. This can never happen with Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology as votes are stored in central server and not at booth level machines. Even if some remote booth is captured by goons they will get access to Tabs which are just screens. They can neither caste new votes without Aadhaar authentication of voter nor manipulate stored votes as stored votes are safe in the central server.

6. Blocking of voters from reaching booth – It’s a common practice that goons in the area do not allow voters to reach the booth and vote. Again, several videos of recent West Bengal elections are available on the internet. This can never happen with Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology as voters can vote from anywhere directly from their mobile. Voters need not go to any booth.

7. Replacement of ballot box – One of the easiest method of hacking an offline election is to replace the ballot box with a different ballot box with fake votes. The fact that these ballot box need to be transported from polling booth to central storage area, need to be kept stored for 3 days before it is transported to counting area, increases the risk. This can never happen with Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology as votes are stored in the central server and result can be announced immediately after poll close.

8. Human manipulation: Every election is managed by humans. Lok Sabha election require 1 crore people to manage the election. Most of these people are not Election Commission employees, they are temporary workers posted on election duty, at times against their wishes. These people have little expertise on election matters and can be coerced, manipulated to compromise the system. And any system is as strong as the weakest link. This can never happen with Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology as the whole system is automatic without any human intervention. No human is required for authentication of voter, registering of vote or counting of votes. All these activities are handled by the system itself.

9. Disenfranchisement: One of the biggest frauds of the current offline voting system is that it denies Right to vote to 1/3 of the eligible population. The world is mobile, and people do not live all their life at one place. People move to other places for jobs, marriage, education and various other reason. The process of getting address on voter ID changed is so tedious, bureaucratic and long that most people give up. Voting percentage among NRIs is 0% and for soldiers its 3%. With Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology nobody is denied his right to vote. All voters can vote from anywhere directly from your mobile.

10. Voter list problems: One of the most common problems voters complain about in the current voting system is that suddenly name of the voter goes missing from the voter list. This can happen due to reasons like clerical errors, reorganization of voter’s constituency, voters name being listed at some other booth, old records etc. With Right2Vote’s mobile voting technology and Aadhaar linked voter list, such problems would never happen. Right2Vote sends real time alerts and reminders to voters and voter need not know the exact booth detail. Aadhaar data bank ensure that citizen name is always listed and updated.

11. Man in the middle attack: In current offline voting system the ballot papers and ballot boxes, before voting and after voting travel across geographies, changes many hands and are stored at different places over the period of election which might be longer than a week. There is always a risk that during any such movement or storage the ballot boxes are compromised. This is very common specifically in case of postal ballot where votes travel in envelop across geographies over days. Certain candidates hack the system at the local post office level to his advantage. Man in the middle attack is not possible in Right2vote’s mobile voting technology as votes are encrypted and stored at central server. The voters reach the central server in less than a second of vote casting and stays encrypted till result is declared at the end of the voting process. The whole transmission, recording and storage of vote is automatic and hence there is no risk of human manipulation.

This is just a small list of kinds of hacking of votes that happen in the current offline voting system. Now let’s discuss how online system have proved to be much more secure and trustworthy.

Online systems are safe and secure and hence well accepted in similar high risk sensitive areas

1. Emails Vs Post: If you have to securely send a message to somebody what would you choose – Online system (Email / SMS / Whatsapp) or offline system (post / human carrier)? Of course, you would choose online system. Most corporates and governments rely on online system for communication of most confidential information. If online hacking was so easy the world would not have moved to Email. All top government and corporate secrets are available for anybody who can hack Gmail and similar email systems. We have seen that leakage of information is more prevalent in government departments which rely on offline movement of files via peons compared to corporates where all correspondence happens via email.
2. Online banking Vs offline banking: How often we read in the newspaper that a person was robbed of the cash at store, on way to bank etc. We never hear that somebody bank account was hacked into and his money was stolen. Few complains we hear about online theft is most linked to the person being fooled into giving up him money rather than somebody being able to hack into the system to steal his money. All of us without fear keep lakhs of rupees in bank accounts and regularly do transactions worth thousands and lakhs without any fear. If online system were not safe and secure we would not have taken such risk.
3. Online stock trading Vs offline stock trading: Few of us would remember offline stock trading days when share certificates used to get lost in transmission, get stolen from the post office, each transaction used to take days before it was completed, there were issues relating to fake share certificates etc. With online stock trading, number of transactions have multiplied, transaction time has come down to seconds still people are more confident about the safety and security of the system. We regularly keep our shares in Dmat accounts online and transact online from mobile and laptops. We would not have risked all our life saving to such online accounts if we were not confident that the online system is safe and secure.

Security layers & Value at Risk: One more myth we need to clarify is that one successful hacking does not mean the result of the election can be changed. Its like assuming that one successful hack of online banking system of SBI would bankrupt the bank. All security systems have multiple layers of security. In almost impossible situation of successful breach also the number of vote that can be manipulated can be limited to one. Unlike banking transactions where one single banking transaction can be worth thousands of crores, in voting system one transaction is limited to one vote. Hence value at risk is very low. In each offline election hundreds and thousands of voters’ face one of the above-mentioned hacks. Substantial number of voters don’t get to vote, compared to that one or two vote hacks in impossible scenario should not be a very serious concern.

Conclusion: Right2Vote’s online voting system is much more secure than any offline voting system. If the voting system is online and internet linked it increases the security of the system and does not reduce it. Technology has evolved enough to ensure that online systems are safe and secure. People oppose up-gradation of technology due to fear of change, inertia, lack of understanding of technology or vested interest. Online voting is something that mankind will have to upgrade to sooner or later. The question is not whether it would be accepted or not, the question is how early it would be accepted.

With cryptocurrencies hitting the roof, blockchain is the new fad. These days, I hear this question very often – are you using blockchain? Many of the people who ask us this question generally does not even know the difference between blockchain and bitcoin. Mostly we have heard this question from investors, startup ecosystem people and not from customers yet. But that day is not far off when customers would start asking this question. Hence here is the answer, YES – we do offer blockchain as an option. But our counter question is – Do you really need it? We believe very few clients would really need it and its important on our part to inform them about the pros and cons. This article aims to do just that.

Distributed Ledger

The basic premise of block chain is that it works on the concept of distributed ledger. There is no one person controlling the data and each transaction online is verified / authenticated / recorded by several people (in thousands or lakhs) in the chain. For a transaction to be authenticated 50% of the people in the chain need to authenticate it. This ensures transparency.

To explain it – in offline world it’s like when a voter is voting he shows his vote to 1000 people sitting in that room and each person maintains the record of each vote independently in his own dairy. Once more than 50% of the people have made the same entry, a transaction is approved.

The biggest reason to move to blockchain – transparency

In short, the biggest advantage of block chain is that it can add lot of transparency in the whole election process – which is a super benefit for any election process.

But then do we know what transparency really means and what all we need to sacrifice for this transparency?

Concerns with Blockchain

1. Secret ballot: One of the main requirement in any election is ‘Secret ballot’. (Secret ballot means – nobody including the election management should be able to trace back a vote to the voter. Voter should have full privacy of his vote and he should be able to vote without any fear or pressure). Now Secret ballot is opposite of transparency. In an open ledger system, when thousands of people are keeping ledger of each vote how do you ensure Secret Ballot? One method can be that identity of the voter is kept encrypted and he is given a dummy identity number to protect his identity.
2. Result counting after poll close: In most sensitive election result computing happens after the voting process is over. Real time result counting is not advisable as it would lead to leakage of trend information and that can influence the voters. In case of blockchain, even if the voter data is encrypted, we cannot encrypt the vote data as that is the data which need to be authenticated by each ledger keeper. Which means the vote data is available with thousands of people in the chain and they can know the voting trend on real time basis. One might argue that vote data can be stored in secured place till the poll closes and then it would be made available for all ledger keeper for authentication. This would take away the benefit of transparency as any manipulation of data can happen during the storage period. To ensure distributed ledger system to work the data should be available to everybody instantly.
3. Decentralization: The blockchain is based on the concept of empowering the mass and taking away the authority from single individual / entity. If a transaction must be approved by a majority the central authority has very limited role. This is good and bad. Think of a situation where in a country election is happening on blockchain method. Citizen of the country are approving each transaction. There is a particular minority party which is a party of the poor and uneducated and voters of that party do not even own or know how to use computers. Hence not many of their voters are among the blockchain ledger keeper. There is a clear incentive for the majority to misbehave and not authenticate votes in favor of this minority party.
4. Computing power: Any transaction in block chain environment requires 1000X+ computing because each transaction is authenticated by thousands of ledgers keeper. Who will pay for this extra computing that is involved. Suppose 1 billion people are voting in Indian Lok Sabha election which is happening on block chain based eVoting. The ledger is being maintained by 1 million people on public servers. This means computing requirement would be 1000000X. Do we understand what it means in terms of server stability, server uptime, server cost, bandwidth etc?
5. Time: What about the time required for these multiple authentications? In blockchain each transaction has a block time (the block time is the average time it takes for the network to generate one extra block in the blockchain, for Bitcoin its 10 minutes!). Voting transaction unlike banking transactions generally peak on few select days. How would block chain handle that and what is an appropriate block time in voting kind of use?
6. Cost: The huge computing requirement, data storage and exchange which is 1000X+ in case of blockchain has a cost. Who would pay for that cost. In case of bitcoin, the individual ledger keepers or miners are paying for the computing as they are getting bitcoins in return. In case of election, it has to be paid by the election manager.
7. Incentivizing the ledger keeper / miner: The ledger keeper / miners would not work for free. There has to be some incentive for them to keep the ledger. What is the incentive we can provide to them to keep record of all the votes being cast? It would be foolish to assume that as citizens are individually interested in the result of the election, that is a good enough incentive for them to keep the ledger.
8. Private servers: Even today in case of government and other sensitive election the election commissioners and other election managers are not comfortable storing the voting data on cloud. They insist that the data should be stored on their own servers. Now how would they react if we tell them that the data would be stored on thousands of servers across the world? Permissioned blockchains or private blockchain is an option but private blockchain is against the concept of blockchain itself. As experts call it – it’s nothing more than cumbersome databases. In case of private servers, the private server can be hacked and the whole point of distributed record keeping is lost. The servers are in control of single company / organization / authority and they can always manipulate the data in all copies unlike public blockchain where copies are with independent individuals among public.
9. Data storage: One of the other important benefit of blockchain is that data once stored (after authentication) is almost impossible to manipulate. This is very useful in banking and other industry. However, in case of voting, result counting happens immediately after poll close and then result is announced immediately. The vote data lose its relevance after that until unless you just want to store it for audit purpose. Manipulating the stored data would not change the result of the election which has already been announced. Hence spending on cumbersome database does not make sense.

We would request our customers to ask these questions to themselves before they decide on whether they want blockchain or not:

1. Are you willing to pay the cost?
2. Do you really want transparency? Remember secrecy is opposite of transparency.
3. Are you comfortable with decentralization? Abdicating power is not an easy thing.
4. Do you really need blockchain or you want it because it’s the latest fad? If you do not want transparency and decentralization and still want blockchain then you can opt for private blockchain. But remember ‘Private blockchain’ in an oxymoron.

Let me start with a question.

What is the information that you are sharing with Government of India under Aadhaar which anyway you were not sharing? Biometrics – Fingerprint & Iris scans?

Even when I applied for my passport, providing fingerprint and Iris scan was a must. In countries like Malaysia and Dubai they took my fingerprint and iris scan at immigration and without that they would not let me enter their country. This shows that it was never a private data and nowhere in the world people have objected to sharing this kind of information.

First, we need to understand what is Bio-metric. As per dictionary:

Bio-metric verification is any means by which a person can be uniquely identified by evaluating one or more distinguishing biological traits. Unique identifiers include fingerprints, hand geometry, voice, facial features, earlobe geometry, retina and iris patterns, voice waves, DNA, and signatures.

Facial recognition has been one of the oldest form of biometrics. Since birth we distinguish one person from the other by looking at their face. All government and private bodies collect passport size photograph and provide IDs based on facial biometrics. Most forms have a requirement of affixing passport size photograph. Recently Apple has launched iPhone which uses facial biometrics verification.

All these years we have been providing facial biometrics to government and other bodies without complaining about privacy. In certain communities, they insist females in their family to cover their faces in public places. It can be called Burkha in Islam or Ghoonghat in Hinduism. Recently Germany banned covering face while driving so that cameras on roads can identify the driver. We have been showing our faces, submitting photographs for all kind of documents all the while and never complained about privacy. Then why are we complaining now?

Coming back to Aadhaar. What is Aadhaar? Aadhaar (meaning ‘the basis’ in Hindi) is a 12 digit unique-identity (UID) number issued to all Indian residents based on their biometric and demographic data.

USA also has a Social Security Number (SSN). It is doing exactly what government of India is doing with Aadhaar. As per Wikipedia: In the United States, a Social Security number (SSN) is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary (working) residents … Although its primary purpose is to track individuals for Social Security purposes, the Social Security number has become a de facto national identification number for taxation and other purposes.

Why nobody complains about privacy issue with SSN in USA? Just because it collects only facial bio-metrics in form of a photograph and not fingerprint and Iris? SSN started off in 1935 and Aadhaar in 2009. Considering the way technology has improved in these 70 plus years, it would have been foolish to go for manual bio-metrics and not go for mechanized bio-metrics when you are building a UID system from scratch. Specially because internet has been invented in the interim and most of the activities today happen without face to face contact – over the internet.

Why nobody complained about bio-metrics in 2009 when congress started it? The current government did not added bio-metrics in Aadhaar. It was there when Congress government initiated it. Suddenly, what has changed that the same Congress party is now considering it as a privacy risk?

Linking Aadhaar with everything – Bank account, Mobile SIM, tax return, investments etc. is the issue? Yes, the BJP government is now linking everything with Aadhaar. But why is that an issue. In USA, you quote your SSN number for everything. There also it evolved from a social security number to Unique Identity Number. At least, in India it was always supposed to be Unique Identity number.

Anyway, all places where now quoting Aadhaar is mandatory, providing identity document with photograph was anyway mandatory. In India, for a new sim card, opening bank account, filing tax return, making investment etc – always ID proof was required with biometrics in form of photograph. So, when providing identity certificate and biometrics in form photograph and signature earlier was not an issue, why is it an issue now when you have a single Unique identity document in form of Aadhaar? Do you have something to hide? Or the issue is that earlier manual verification was easy to fool and mechanized biometric verification is almost impossible to fool?

This brings us to benefits of Aadhaar and the biggest problem of India – Corruption. All these years we did not had a unique identification system and that made all kind of corruption very easy. We had ghost teachers in government schools, ghost doctors in hospitals, ghost workers in MNGREGA and other government projects, ghost farmers taking farm loan and then farm loan waivers, ghost citizen holding ration cards, ghost households taking subsidized gas connection, ghost students in government schools. The list is endless. It worked for politicians, bureaucrats and everybody connected with them. In 70 years, it completely made the DNA of the country corrupt and major section of population is illegitimately taking advantage of the system. There are fake bank accounts, benami properties, fake education degrees, fake driving licenses… People send fakes to appear in exams, political parties send fakes to vote in their favor. Most government lists including the voter list, ration card list, student list, teacher list have dummy names. We were not even able to identify terrorist who cross the borders and start living among us due to lack of unique identity like Aadhaar.

Our ex-prime minister, Shri Rajiv Gandhi, rightly pointed out that only “15p out of a rupee reaches the intended beneficiary”. Aadhaar is the Brabhma Astra (The ultimate weapon) to root out corruption. This unique identity is almost impossible to fool as it is not human dependent. The system verifies and the system authenticates. And this is why, everybody including the politicians, bureaucrats and people connected to them are not liking it. They have been so used to their corrupt income, that now they consider it as their birth right. They do not want Aadhaar to ruin it. And hence they are in all-out battle against Aadhaar. Problem these people have with Aadhaar is not Privacy, its efficiency!

One of the agreement used against Aadhaar is that bio-metrics like fingerprint and Iris can be faked and people can use fake fingerprints and Iris scan to fool the system. Well, nothing is 100% foolproof, but you would agree it is many times better than manual verification of picture on an identity card. 99.99% of corruption would be routed out with Aadhaar. For 0.01% of sophisticated criminals we need additional checks, that does not mean do away with Aadhaar based check.

Another argument we heard on some Whatsapp was – suppose there was an Emergency kind of situation and government will have so much power. What if you have to fight against your own government. First, to fight against your own government you use your Right2Vote and not become a terrorist. Secondly, if democracy is taken away, in today’s world the best way to fight the government is from abroad through media and diplomatic pressure. When you move abroad the jurisdiction of your country government ends and Aadhaar cannot be used to track you. You use social media and other media to get international community to put pressure upon the government to reinstall democracy. Running around with weapons is not the way to fight against your own country government in today’s world.

Also, even without Aadhaar, the facial recognition software’s are very advanced these days and most government use it to track people. You have cameras on roads, all major malls, shopping complexes, residential buildings, government and private installations, hotels, airports, railways stations etc. If the government is looking for you, they would not wait for you to do a Aadhaar based transaction before they catch you. The first thing they use to track you is your mobile phone. Even without Aadhaar linking, Government has data of who owns which sim. There is a mandatory verification process before issue of sim cards, and government bodies regularly use it to track criminals. Most of these data including your geolocation, your last call details, your all call history is provided by telecom companies to government. You should be more worried that a private telecom company and their employees has so much data about you and can use it against you any day and not only in days of Emergency. They know where your daughter is at any particular time, where she goes regularly and what time. Which route she takes, who she interacts with, how much money she has in back account etc.

We should be thinking how we can use Aadhaar to make democracy strong, and this is exactly what we are working on at Right2Vote Infotech private limited. There is lot of wrong practices prevalent in our election system too and that is helping bad candidates coming to power. Aadhaar can help in cleaning the voter list, it can also help eliminate voting based on false identity which is a big problem in Indian elections. Aadhaar’s digital platform can help in online authentication and voting which can help major sections of population who are not able to vote today like – Non Resident Indians (NRIs), Soldiers, Doctors, in country migrants, old & sick people etc. When higher percentage of population exercise their Right2Vote, the democracy becomes strong.

We believe Aadhaar is THE most significant reform undertaken by the country in last 25 years and we should try to maximize benefits by leveraging on this great foundation. Aadhaar on top of internet revolution has given us opportunity to leap ahead of the developed countries. Aadhaar can help us root out our biggest problems – corruption and terrorism. We should not get distracted by privacy bogey created by the vested interest and waste this opportunity.

Foundation of good decision making is availability of sound data. I believe, big reason for low quality political decision making in India is misleading & low-quality data. The whole process of accounting in government is managed by people who have no training in accounting. Also, the leaders – bureaucrats from administrative services and politicians have no understanding of accounting.

As per government figures Rs. 4000 crores* was spent in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. My back of the envelop calculation suggest the number must be more than Rs. 30,000 crores!! I filed a RTI to get the details but did not get any response. With limited information, it is not possible to come up with an exact number, but in the text, that follows, I will convince you that it is many times more than Rs. 4000 crores.

1 Crore people on election duty

In the attached link from Times of India, Mr. Modi not only quotes Rs. 4000 crores number but also mentions that more than 1 crore people are required to manage the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Which means government spends only Rs. 4000 per election worker. ( Rs. 4000 crores / 1 crore people). Is it possible?

Generally, people are deployed in district other than their home district to avoid conflict of interest. The people who work on election are not only paid daily allowance but also all their expenses relating to flight / rail expenses of the personnel to the voting district, their hotel expenses, their food and local transportation expenses is borne by the government. And mind you the election process goes on for more than 60 days. Hence on an average a person would be employed in the process for around a week or so.

10 Lakh booths for 2014 Lok Sabha election

As per government data, around 10 lakh booths were created for 2014 Lok election across the country. Which means per booth cost of only Rs. 40,000 (Rs. 4000 crores / 10 lakh booths). Is it possible?

Each election booth requires: real estate, minimum 5 people to manage it, electricity, telecommunications, security cameras, furniture, marking inks, security personnel, EVM machines, voter list, stationary, food, water, toilet and other services for personnel, power backup, queue management, voter query management, transportation and logistics facilities.

Rs. 3173 crores for new EVMs – VVPAT machines

Recently union cabinet cleared purchase of additional 16 lakh EVM VVPAT machines at the cost of Rs. 3173 crores.

If cost of new EVM machines is Rs. 3173 crores, that leaves only Rs. 827 crores for the rest of election work. And mind you this is just the purchase price. There is substantial spend involved in security, testing, reconfiguration, training, logistics, maintenance of these machines. There might be an argument that these machines have long life, but that is untenable argument in rapid changing technology era. Sudden upgrade to VVPAT machines proves the point.

My Estimate of total Lok Sabha election cost:

1.      Expenses relating to 1 crore election workers (Rs. 15,000 per person) – Rs. 15,000 crores

2.      Cost of setting up 10 lakh booths (Rs. 1 lakh per booth) – Rs. 10,000 crores

3.      Cost of EVM machines (including maintenance) – Rs. 2000 crores

4.      Cost of security – Rs. 2000 crores

5.      Cost of Logistics – Rs. 1000 crores

6.      Cost of communication, advertisement, training – Rs. 1000 crores

7.      Cost of Voter list preparation, voter registration – Rs. 1000 crores

8.      Postal ballot cost, counting centers etc. – Rs. 500 crores

Total  = Rs. 32,500 crores

This Cost estimates excludes the opportunity cost

Please note, the above expenses do not include the opportunity cost of people and resources which is diverted to election management.

What is the opportunity cost of lost classes in government school where teaches have been sent on election duty?

What is the opportunity cost of the security personnel who is moved from border and deployed on election duty?

What is the opportunity cost of the school or other government premises which is used for booth?

What is the opportunity cost of IAS and other government officials time who are deployed to election duty?

What is the opportunity cost of declaring holiday on election day? One day GDP of India = Rs. 40,000 crores

What is the opportunity cost of policy paralysis due to ‘Election model code of conduct’ announced by Election commission around elections?

So, who is paying the difference?

The obvious question is why would anybody under report the expense and then who is paying for it? Of course, government (we taxpayers) are only paying for it. The problem is it’s not been accounted properly. For example:

1.      The cost of deploying 1 crore people are appearing so low because their regular department is bearing their expenses in form of salary, daily allowance, major portion of their logistics and other expenses.

2.      The substantial part of cost of setting up of booth is borne by the government school or other public / private entity that is providing the space. Not only election commission does not pay the rent for the space but makes the organization to bear expenses like electricity, power back up, communication, toilets and other utilities, cleaning and other labour.

3.      The cost of EVM machines are shown as a separate one-time capital expenditure and not allocated to elections.

4.      Security expenses including deployment of army personnel, planes, equipment is borne by the defense ministry, local police department and other similar departments of government.

5.      Cost of running the Election commission, its employees, their logistics and other expenses are funded as regular expenses of Election Commission and not counted in election cost

6.      Bureaucrats including IAS officers involved in the election get reimbursement from their home department for expenses like flight tickets, transportation vehicle, hotel stays, communication etc.

7.      Large number of government properties including guest houses are used by election officials and expenses are booked as regular expenses of the property and not allocated to election

8.      Sitting MPs, MLAs, other party workers with government posts use resources of their own ministry / department and does not book them as election expenses. Lot of Public Sector Units (PSUs) resources are also used. Recent expose by one of the media channel showed that these politicians are paying Rs. 30,000 plus for one-way flight ticket and their individual annual TA, DA bills are in lakhs and crores.

Accounting is not rocket science but it requires technical knowledge

After reading the above, many of you might react – how does it matter how you capture in accounts? The fact is tax payers were supposed to pay for it and tax payers are paying for it.

Would you say the same if Mr. Modi reduces the cost of Bullet train by showing major part of the investment as farm loan waiver?

Accounting provides information which forms the basis of all decision making. Wrong accounting leads to wrong decision making. Accounting Standards and concepts are built over years to ensure proper recording of accounts. People who are not trained in accounting does not understand the difference between capital expenditure and revenue expenditure. Similarly, concept of cost allocation and process of allocation would not be easy for somebody who is not trained in accounting.

Institute of Chartered Accountant of India (body formed by Act of Parliament), notifies accounting standards which all companies in India must follow. Somehow, Government of India and its departments do not strictly enforce these standards.

So, what is the solution? – Mobile Voting

Many people would react, even if cost of Lok Sabha election is Rs. 30,000 crores, we need democracy and we cannot wish away this cost. The fact is – elections can be held at less than 1/10th the cost with the help of mobile voting. With mobile voting people would be able to vote from anywhere directly from their mobile and would not have to waste time and effort to visit a booth. The requirement of setting up 10 lakhs booths can be eliminated completely. Similarly, election can be managed with less than 1000 people compared to more than 1 crore right now. There would be no requirement of EVM machines. The whole election process can be completed in 1 day compared to 2 months currently. Other benefits include no need to declare holiday on election day, no need of months long election code of conduct and biggest of all – higher voter participation leading to better selection of leaders.

We at Right2Vote Infotech P Ltd, specializes in providing mobile voting platform for election and have technology to authenticate voters via Aadhaar over mobile. We can guarantee that the whole election can be held in less than 1/10th the cost.

Free bullet trains every 5 years

Lok Sabha election costs Rs. 30,000 crores. Then we have state elections and local body elections where same 100 crore citizen need to vote. In all we are spending around Rs. 90,000 crores every 5 years on election. This is roughly investment required for bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. There are so many people questioning whether India can afford bullet train. Going by same logic, can we afford booth based elections?

Election is not limited to Government. Every organization including cooperatives, professional associations, corporates, clubs, housing societies and colleges have member election. Just ensure that your organization is not wasting a fortune on booth based voting! Who knows, moving to mobile voting can save you enough to buy you a Mercedes!

–         Neeraj Gutgutia (neeraj@Right2vote.in, +91 9920591306)

References:

*Modi in TOI – Election cost of Rs. 4000 crore, 1 crore people for election management: http://www.pressreader.com/india/the-times-of-india-mumbai-edition/20170913/282153586443418

Hindu: Election cost – Rs. 3426 core: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/govt-spent-rs-3426-cr-on-lok-sabha-polls/article6005247.ece

Indian Express: New EVM cost – 3173 crore: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/cabinet-clears-ec-proposal-to-buy-new-paper-trail-machines-sources-4619227/

For the last three years, I have been meeting lot of politicians, political parties, election officers, government representatives, activists, NGOs and one common thing that I have noticed everywhere is that they blame the voter for the low voter turnout. And when I ask them how many times they themselves have voted – they always come up with a ‘genuine’ excuse why they have not voted most of the time!!

Voter does not vote for various reasons. We have tried to make a list of reasons why they do not vote.

1.      Voter is not registered as a voter anywhere due to lack of ID proof / bureaucratic and time-consuming processes / denied on flimsy ground / lack of awareness about the registration process

2.      Voter is registered in a city other than the city of residence

3.      Voter does not have the voter ID card, although he is registered

4.      Voter is travelling on the date of voting for family or office reasons

5.      Voter is travelling for holidaying

6.      Voter is ill and not able to travel to the booth to vote

7.      Voter has work in office

8.      Voter is a daily laborer and cannot afford to waste time in queue

9.      Voting booth is very far from voter’s residence / work place

10.  Voter does not want to spend money to travel to booth / the cost of travel to booth is not worth it for the voter

11.  Voter does not want to waste time standing in queue

12.  Voter does not have the exact details of which booth he is supposed to vote. The ‘purchi’ with his booth details, serial number etc. has not reached him and booth officer cannot locate him in the voter list although he has the voter ID.

13.  Voter is a soldier posted at front away from his city of registration

14.  Voter is an NRI living abroad

15.  Voter is an election worker, on government duty, and posted at a location other than his city of registration by the government to ensure impartiality.

16.  Voter is an election worker, of a political party, who has been posted at the central control room or at a booth / location other than his registered place of voting

17.   Voter is a student who is studying in a college outside his city of registration

18.  Voter is a student who has exams on the day of election or in the next few days

19.  Voter is a sportsperson who has a match on the day of voting or is travelling for training

20.  Voter is a housewife with young kids. She can neither stand in queue with the kids not leave them alone at home

21.  Voter is a pregnant lady

22.  Voter is a driver, housemaid or anybody who is employed in similar low paying jobs and who do not get holiday on day of election

23.  Voter is a truck driver carrying goods miles away from home

24.  Voter is a pilot or air-hostess flying passengers across the globe

25.  Voter is a local train driver / bus driver driving voters to the booth

26.  Voter is a lawyer or a judge who must be present for the court hearing

27.   Voter is a person who is paid by the hour

28.  Voter is a scientist working against time to find solution to a deadly disease

29.  Voter is a laborer who is working on an infrastructure project which is already delayed

30.  Voter is a rocket scientist who is working against deadline to next launch

31.  Voter is a call center employee responding to emergency calls relating to women safety, medical emergencies, road accidents, passport issues, Indian Railway helpline

32.  Voter is an army men or a police officer given duty to ensure safety of booth other than the booth where he is supposed to vote

33.  Voter is an actor / movie crew shooting at an international location

34.  Voter is a newly married lady who has moved to a city other than city or registration

35.  Voter is a consultant working out of client location

36.  Voter is a corporate sector / government sector employee who is working in the city other than city of residence

37.   Voter is an auto driver or a taxi driver who earn only when he drives and his interest clock on car / auto loan does not stop even on the election day

38.  Voter is a television company / newspaper company employee entrusted with live election coverage

39.  Voter is a doctor looking after patients in a hospital with long queue

40.  Voter is a doctor working in emergency ward

The list is endless. Of the 40 types of voter above, who you believe is justified to not vote and who you think needs to be blamed for not voting?

It is a widely accepted thought that – voting is a service to the national and responsibility of every citizen and hence each citizen should do the same even if that means some personal sacrifice. I agree that voting is a service to the nation and responsibility of every citizen. But is personal sacrifice necessary?

A soldier who is willing to sacrifice his life for the country – do you think he need to be blamed for not voting? Voting percentage of soldiers in the country is only 2-3%!!! This is despite they are being provided with postal ballot facility. Why are they not voting? They are not responsible people? They do not believe in personal sacrifice? They do not care about the well-being of the country?

During the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the voter turnout percentage was only 66%. Winning party vote share was 32% of 66% i.e. 21%. If the rest 33% had voted, would the result have been different? Do the numbers suggest that we have ‘Real Democracy’ in the country?

A voting system, where winning party get less votes than the number of voters who did not cast their vote, is defective to say the least. We must admit that our voting system is relic of the past. Few years back it was okay to accept a customer to stand in queue for hours to pay electricity bill, for rail ticket, for withdrawing cash from bank, for milk, for water, for ration. In the age of internet, it should be a criminal offence to make people wait in queue. As per news reports more than 70 people died standing in queue during demonetization. But then, voting is a national service, so what if you die in the process of voting.

Right2Vote is a right promised by the Constitution of India. As per the Election Commission directives – Polling booth need to be set up so that no voter should travel more than 2 kms to reach the booth. And I am sure, here booth means booth where the voter can vote and not any booth. Today a voter is not allowed to vote at any booth and is supposed to vote at the specific booth he is registered. This means, Election Commission is not standing by their promise of booth within 2 kms and large section of population is being denied their Right2Vote. This means the provision is just an eyewash. A soldier, an NRI, a migrant and many other segments listed above are all denied their Right2Vote because they are not stationed at their original place of registration.

At Right2Vote Infotech, we have built the world’s first mobile verified voting platform which would assure Right2Vote to the citizens. People would be able to vote anytime and from anywhere directly from their mobile. There would not be any requirement to visit a booth to vote. Voters would be voting directly from their mobile and verification would happen real time using Aadhaar. The whole voting process would take less than a minute. Apart from saying minimum 90% time, cost and effort for the election commission, the system would save minimum 90% time, cost and effort for the voter also. This would lead to substantial increase in voter turnout leading to better election results. All 40 types of voters listed above and beyond, would benefit from this mobile platform and would be able to regain their Right2Vote.

One of the common concern people have against Mobile Voting is hacking. Most of the people do not even understand the meaning of the word, but love to use it as an argument against hacking.

Let’s first understand what hacking means:

 “Act of cutting into or gaining unauthorized access, esp. remotely, to a computer system or network’’

Myth 1 – Hacking is possible only in online or networked world

As is clear from the above definition, hacking is act of getting unauthorized access. It need not necessarily means in networked environment. In fact, with wireless mobile technology ‘network’ itself has a totally different meaning. Airwaves can be used to access an equipment which might not have been on the ‘network’. Once small hidden chip somewhere in a machine like EVM can make it part of the network, although user might be living with false assurance that the equipment is not part of any network.

In case of EVMs, paper ballot and postal ballot: The EVMs, ballot paper, ballot box, the postage travels through several hands across several geographies over and over several months. For example, in case of Lok Sabha elections in India, 1 crore plus people are involved, the process goes on for more than 2 months and these machines travel the length and breadth of country. Every person, every day, every geography adds to vulnerability of the system. Here the organization structure with 1 crore people is the vulnerable network. The logistical chain is the vulnerable network.

Supporters of EVMs and paper ballots argue that the impact of one hack might not be big enough. True, only if, it is not done at the equipment manufacturer level itself or at the level of result compilation. However, it should be remembered that impersonation, booth capturing, duplicate voting, postage hacking, counting frauds are common practice in physical voting and somehow, we are so used to it that we do not consider it as hacking or do not see it as a fatal problem. There are many regions in the country where such offline hacks are being done in systematic fashion at large scale and we decide to ignore it by blaming law and order system.

Remote hacking

What people worry about mobile or internet voting is remote hacking. In case of offline equipment’s like EVMs and EVMs with PPVAT also there is a possibility of remote hacking with help of magnetic field, light rays, sound waves, airwaves (Bluetooth, secret chip) etc. Considering these EVMs are built by only one or 2 suppliers and these equipments are still using decade old technologies the vulnerability of these machines is high. Due to lack of sophistication, the risk of remote hacking of current equipment is very low, however, the ease & risk of remote hacking with phantom chip is very high.

In case of mobile voting the concern is that system can be hacked from anywhere. Yes, that concern is valid but at the same time technologies have advanced substantially and enough technology exists to protect systems from online hacking. If that was not true; the stock exchanges, the banking systems, the traffic systems, the Air traffic control, railway systems and such other sensitive infrastructure would have been open to terrorist attacks and mankind would have never relied on them. Hacking in, for example, air traffic system can cost several lives which I suppose is more valuable than few votes. In comparison, in election system, in the worst case scenario, you can always nullify the voting and go for revote.

The points to be kept in mind about hacking is:

one, there are enough technologies to guard against hacking which include use of fire walls, encryptions etc.

Second, in instance of successful hack, there are enough methods to raise alert that system has been hacked leading to re-vote. These methods including duplicate data transfer from different routes, random routing, token counting and cross checking with tokens.

Hence, in case of mobile voting 100% accuracy and 100% hack proofing is possible which is not possible in offline voting systems like EVMs, paper ballot and postal ballot.

Myth 2: Online hacking can be done at a big scale leading to big impact unlike offline hacking

This again is a myth. The trick is to break the hacking space into small rooms with different walls. For example – In case of Lok Sabha elections in India 543 seats would be individually different election and it is not possible for one person to make one hack and appoint his own Prime Minister. At best, he would get one MP.

The art is to further break it down. In our platform, we use individual vote encryption. This means, a hacker with one successful hack can get only one vote. In a 12-hour election period he would have to do thousands of successful hacks to be able to move the needle. Even if he is successful in one or two hack, the duplicate data flow + random routing + cross checking + count checking plus audit trail would ensure that alarms would be raised.

And this is after he is able to penetrate several fire walls, decrypt the encryption, is able to encrypt it again. The system apart from having individual vote encryption also has end to end encryption which include the equipment level encryption, encryption during transmission and storage level encryption. Also the mother storage is offline and hence remote hacking is not possible.

Risk is a factor of time

Also note, the duration of mobile voting is just one day against several months in case of offline voting. This means, the hacker has to do all the hacking is those 12 hours. The limited time substantially reduces the risk of hacking. Unlike stock exchanges, banks, ATC, power systems which are always on, the voting systems are on for only few hours. It would be very difficult for a hacker to understand the system and do substantial hacking in that 12 hours.

Conclusion

Hacking is a risk that can be mitigated with proper preparation and use of technology. Hacking is not an unmanageable risk because of which mobile voting should be rejected. Mankind is too invested in internet now to raise hacking as an argument against voting. If hacking was such a risk, many critical activities which can put human lives at risk of hacking would not have moved to networked world. Mobile voting is an eventuality that is destined to happen. These arguments can delay the timelines but cannot change the destiny.

Today there is huge debate going on in India regarding (Electronic Voting Machines) EVM used in voting. Many politicians lead by Mayawati, Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi have questioned the EVM and blamed them for the recent poll debacle. And considering they have questioned EVM, they are asking Election Commission (EC) to revert to Paper Ballot. Nobody is stating how paper ballot is better than EVM.

What is alarming is lack of technical discussion around the various technologies. EVM is also a technology which has been in use in India for more than 2 decades. Technologies and world has evolved substantially in last two decades, but somehow everybody is ignoring that.

Hacking – Online & Offline

First, EVMs are not connected via internet in India. Hence online hacking is not possible. The machines are pre-configured with software at the time of manufacture which is very difficult to mess with later. Hence online hacking is impossible with EVMs.

On the other hand the EVMs need to be stored, physically moved across geographies and are stored at various places during the period of elections which may last 2 to 3 months. During this period if people can get access to the machines they can do almost anything with the data stored. Yes, there are seals, locks and human security systems around these EVMs but we all know these security systems can never be foolproof especially when you doubt the government machinery who are managing the election. We should also be aware that Election Commission generally does not have big team at its disposal and manages the elections with help of temporary staff who come from the government machinery. Here we should mention that VVPT (Voter Verified Paper Trail) EVMs are no better than regular EVMs. They actually do not provide any Audit Trail. It just improves the optics, because in this case voter get to see whom he has voted for. However, in offline hacking, these papers can always be replaced.

The same risk is true with Paper ballot. Like EVMs they are also stored and physically transferred across the country and are on the mercy of physical security systems and temporary election management staff.  Hence when it comes to hacking, Paper ballot is equally bad in comparison to EVMs.

Advancement in voting technology

Mobile Voting (mVoting) is several generations advanced technology over EVMs (eVoting) and paper ballot. EMV with VVPT, EVM with internet, Internet voting (iVoting) were technologies in between. We need not waste time on them as Mobile Voting (mVoting) is much more advanced them all these technologies.

Mobile Voting (mVoting)

Again, mVoting has many versions across the world. For shake of simplicity we would restrict ourselves to the most advanced version and made for India version as created by Right2Vote Infotech Private Limited which has two major patented advancement over all other form of mVoting – Aadhaar based mVerification and Audit trail (along with secret ballot). Let’s look at the key advantages of mVoting:

Advantages of Mobile Voting

1. Vote from Anywhere & Voter turnout:The biggest advantage of mVoting is that voter can vote from anywhere directly from his or her mobile. Voter is not restricted by his geographical location, even a NRI sitting in USA or a soldier sitting in Siachen can vote. Currently 1/3 of the population is denied their #Right2Vote due to booth based voting. Mobile voting cures this biggest fraud of democracy.
2. Verification:mVoting is equipped with Aadhaar based mVerification (Mobile Verification) both on the basis of bio-metrics (Fingerprint / Iris) or Mobile OTP (One Time Password). Aadhaar has been rated as one of the most sophisticated system even by World Bank and no other country in the world has something equivalent of Aadhaar. This verification works very similar to verification in case of mobile based banking transactions. As there is no human involvement, the system is 100x better than any physical verification system.
3. Cost:Cost of election management will be reduced by more than 90% as no booths or physical infrastructure is required
4. Time:Time required for election management would be reduced by more than 90% as the complete election can be held in one day and counting is real-time.
5. Effort:Human man-hours required to manage the election would reduce by more than 90%. Verification, security, counting etc. everything is automatic.
6. Audit trail:Right2Vote has built a patented audit trail feature along with secret ballot. This we have been able to achieve with smart use of encryption and Aadhaar. All other system including paper ballot, EVM and VVPT has no audit trail mechanism.
7. Regular usage:The current voting system involves so much cost, time and effort that citizen opinion is taken only once in 5 years. With Right2Vote platform citizen opinion can be taken on all important matters, something similar to Mohala Sabha as suggested by AAP.

Criticism of Mobile Voting

First, most of the people including parties like BJP, AAP, Congress, BSP, SP or politicians like Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav have not yet given a serious thought to Mobile Voting. To be fair to Mr. Narendra Modi & Gujarat Election Commission, they tried out iVoting in 2010 in Gujarat, but it didn’t worked out as internet penetration was very low then and technology was not made for India. Aadhaar was also not there.

Hacking: People believe just because something is connected to internet it can be hacked. The whole banking system, the stock market etc. works completely on internet today. If internet was so hackable, such critical system would not have been connected to internet. Over and above, Right2Vote platform provides end to end encryption which makes hacking impossible.

Coercion: There are enough ways to avoid coercion and assuming existing system do not have coercion issues is illusion. For detailed discussion refer: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/only-arguement-against-mobile-voting-coercion-neeraj-gutgutia

Conclusion

India needs to move with time and leverage the super work they have done with Aadhaar. Just because advanced countries have not moved to mVoting we should not reject it. Advanced countries do not have system like Aadhaar. Right2Vote Platform is a made for India technology and it’s natural that the biggest democracy in the world should lead by example when it comes to biggest democratic revolution of the world – Mobile Voting. Audit trail technology in Right2Vote’s mVoting platform would ensure that no politician would be able to blame the system for their loss in elections.