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India Starts All-Electronic National Elections
fantomas writes "Forget the problems of e-voting in a state in some middling sized western country as recently reported by Slashdot. The world's largest democracy is about to go to the polling stations and vote for a new government using all-electronic voting systems. Will it work? Will the USA follow if all goes to plan? Can any readers from India comment on how it seems to be going?"
India's system is a simple box that counts. The system in the U.S. is typically more like an automated teller machine (ATM) with a computer behind it.
The Mercuri method of electronic voting allows the voter to inspect a paper printout of the cast ballot before it lands in the box for use only in the event of a recount. Brazil (and other places) use it. I would like to see it in use wherever direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting is used.
The big quirk in the United States is the decentrallized nature of the voting systems - every county (of which there are about 3400) selects its own voting machines, ballots, and so forth.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
Just voted in the morning. The Electronic Voting machines (EVMs) have been around in India since 5 years or so, but this is the first one in which they are used throughout India.
The voting process is something like this,
U go to the poll booth assigned, someone finds U in the printed list of voters for the booth, the candidates can have their agents sitting inside, who also verify that my name exists.
The identification is via a electoral card or some defined photo-ids
Next U get a ink mark on the index finger, whcih is supposed to be difficult to erase ( techniques to erase them are "well-known":-))
After that U get a slip which is taken by next official who has to press a button to make the EVM operable. So there is a paper trail of who has voted.
The EVM (as shown in the BBC article is a flat device with the names, symbol of the party and a LED and a button) When the official has given the go ahead, there is a green light on top; one has to press the button against the candidate, a red LED against the candidate glows and U are done.
The procedure is quite simple and is lot better than the ballot paper stuffing before.
The counting is done on a scheduled date, wherein all these EVMs are kept in a specified place and counting happens with the candidates' representatives around.
Some pictures:
http://specials.rediff.com/election/2004/apr/20ele cimg8.htm
The elephant carrier news:
http://www.hindu.com/2004/04/20/stories/2004042001 451300.htm
Some candidates:
http://specials.rediff.com/election/2004/apr/16bod y1.htm
This is third time the EVMs have been used but first time for a national elections.
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
I don't remember where i read this: The e-voting machines being used in India aren't networked. At the end of the day, the poll workers take the machines to the main district office and plug them into a network. The software on the machines itself isn't reprogrammable.
India too was basically an one party system initially after independence. But as democracy matured, more and more regional parties got represented in parliament and thus the coalition. Such diversity in parties and points of views are natural in a diverse country such as India.
raj
Sarovar.org Hosting for open source projects in Indi
Their knowledge/usage of computers is limited, and I would put them in the same space as the average Joe/Jane American as far as computer/security knowledge is concerned.
I tried explaining that just a fancy GUI and interface doesn't make for a better voting process, and that the programs/algorithms need to be checked for correctness and security. I don't think the importance of it seeped through - and they still gushed about the fast/easy and hi-tech voting process.
That's about it...I guess the good part is that the machines are mostly firm/hardware and not the beefed up (down?) Windows machines like Diebold's ATM machines in the US. The machines are made by a company called Bharat Electronics. Unfortunately it looks like their server is ASP/IIS based.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
- 31.6% male aged 15+
- 54.6% female aged 15+
and much better in the large 15-24 age cohort:and literacy rates determined by the department of education are 62% in the 1997 data set.
n.b. both literacy and illiteracy rates vary widely between states.
Being a linux geek, I'm all for new technologies being used to make out lives easier, but there are too many special interests and flaws in the current method of E-Voting. The vast majority of E-Voting companies are really just one company that supports a biased outcome to the elections. Not to mention the fact that most of the E-Voting-Machines run M$. The state of E-Voting in america is really bad...
From http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm: If people are voting on machines, they are not voting at all. In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court said that, A "legal vote," as determined by the Supreme Court, is "one in which there is a 'clear indication of the intent of the voter.'" If a machine is involved in the voting process, the voter has been relegated to making inputs and hoping that the machines' output is the same. That output can only be 'circumstantial' evidence of what the voter intended. It is the voters' right to create 'real' evidence of their own intention.
peace
-- Slackware Geek
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy. - Robert Heinlein
With this system, the ruling coalition often has a wafer-thin majority which means even an otherwise insignificant party with a small number of seats in parliament can exert and awfully strong influence on the government. The Prime Minister can be toppled pretty much anytime by losing a confidence vote. If the oppisition isnt't strong enough to form a majority coalition after that the only alternative is to dissolve parliament and hold general elections again.
Although this government has lived out its full 5 year term*, there was a period before that when there were 3 general elections in a 5 year period. In addition to the obvious fiscal cost of polling 600 million people, this level of instability deters investors because they don't know when a new government will come in and change policy.
That said, things seem to be maturing to a degree with parties that have caused governments to fall over minor issues suffering heavy losses in subsequent elections, so maybe we will see some happy middle ground where no party has a free hand, but the government mostly lives out its full term.
* Actually they did decide to hold elections a little earlier than otherwise scheduled for political reasons
interesting fact my ass, this might have happened at one or two places, but even illiterate people know the symbols of congress and BJP, the two major parties by heart. They could vote for the right party in their sleep :P
I squeezed in just before the polls closed at 5:00 PM in Bangalore. I was a little rushed because all the security people kept telling me to hurry up so that they could go home. However the election in my constituency was very peaceful, unlike some other areas.
Interestingly Indian media is not as vocal about the relatively small incidents of violence when compared to the international media.
The electronic voting machines felt a little awkward. There was no feedback to tell me that I had actually voted for the right person, and no mechanism that I could tell to correct myself had I pressed the wrong button. In fact one of the instructions for voters that came out in the Times of India today mentioned that we should make sure the election commission employees monitoring the election didn't "accidentally" press one of our buttons for us.
I would have liked the machine to somehow tell me (either through a display or by printing a little paper receipt) that I had voted for the right person.
Also, one of the women election commission workers was looking down on my machine as I proceeded to push my button. I had to give her a really ugly look, "Do you mind?". She shrugged and went and sat down on her chair. There were representatives from all the political parties contesting for the seat from my constituency.
What's probably not as common in the West is that there were about 10 people contesting from my constituency alone. One each from the major national parties (BJP/NDA, Congress), a couple from the major state parties and a few independents. I think the choice in the West is usually never more than 3 or 4.
After voting each voter is marked with a small drop of ink between the nail and the skin on the forefinger of the left hand. Not sure what they do if you are handicapped.
A state-wide holiday was declared to encourage people to vote. However in some areas it was just too hot in north of the state so the turnout was quite poor (40%-ish) whereas in my state on average I think it is around 60%. I'm sure there were many other factors that affected the voter turnout.
The national parties are promising between 10-12% economic growth, which has probably never been achieved in India's post-independence history. Let's see how things pan out, although it appears the ruling BJP-led alliance will dominate. The question is by how much.
All in all, it still felt good to cast a vote, although numerically the bigger the democracy the smaller the net value of each vote.
Is your system set up to allow votes for people not listed i.e. write-ins or do you have to select 'only' from the list provided?
You are only allowed to vote for the candidates that have registered themselves ( whose names/symbols are present on the ballot paper/EVM )
If you have to select from the list, can you withhold your vote on parts of the ballot because you don't like any of the candidates or does that invalidate the entire ballot?
In case of any unauthorized marking the vote is invalidated.
An elephant carrying a voting machine. Even in my wildest dreams I never would have thought of that. Again, it may be hard for a westerner (for Indians, the term implies not only Americans, but Europeans as well) to believe this, but there are parts of the country that are either very inaccessible, or poorly developed or both. Natural elements play a vital role as well - there are certain parts of the country that are prone to landslides, floods and cloudbursts in the same season and most systems breakdown (at least whatever we have there).
Ultimately, we end up resorting to rather un-natural or the "old" means of conveyance, be it riding elephants.
It may seem amusing or shocking, but using elephants isn't very different than bullock carts (which were and still are used in certain parts of the country).
Or maybe the very mention of elephants reminds you of a zoo and/or brings about images of a oriental land of snake charmers?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Brasil has deprecated the (3% of the total machines in the testing phase, AFAIR) paper-printout machines. The alleged reason is the extra expenditure without any aditional security. ;-)
I disagree, but I can see the rationale: If you can enter a fake result in the vote accounting system, you can also produce a boxfull of fake paper ballots.
Besides, the "will recount/ nah, will take too much time/ oops, where are the ballots?" fiasco in the US pretty much proved that in a big-nation-wide election, it's far more important to get it counted right in the first place.
It's not like there is a better option in the ballot... just hopefully less horrendous ones
Electronic voting systems are all very good. They are simple enough to use - push the button with your favorite party symbol - that people didn't seem to have a problem even though we have a lot of uneducated folk.
However, where the electronic voting was nice, the human factor wasn't. You still have to fill out a ton of forms to get your name on the lists. You need to produce all kind of proof of ID, age and address. You need to go to the office several times to make sure your name gets on the voting list and after all that, sometimes, it just isn't.
Why? because some politicians feel that if they wipe out an entire area that may be hostile to their party from the polling lists, it would be better for them. A lot of my neighbours came away really frustrated and dissappointed because their names were not there even though they had gone through the entire procedure.
So basically, what I'm saying is, e-voting and all is very nice, but given a choice, I'd rather color a circle with a pencil if that's what it takes to be sure that my name will be on the list next time around.
I mean, after all, why do we propose e-voting? To streamline the process right? From experience, I feel that the machines are a very small part of the process and that they should be considered onlt AFTER other issues have been ironed out.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Then you have to be both colour blind and illiterate to make the wrong choice (Pepsi max BTW).
Of course, as the second placed cola maker, Pepsi added a bit of red to it's logo to sow confusion among Coca-cola drinkers.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The Recounts were not messed up by the Supreme Court of the USA. Sorry but to the Democrats out there in the USA who are bitter [I don't like Bush either] take a chill pill. The Florida Supreme Court messed up by trying to make law and the US Supreme Court called them down.
To further educate (assuming it is possible) these people if Al Gore had not lost Arkansas or Tennessee the whole issue would not have come up. The actual decision was made in Tennessee which had a barf attack at their native son Al Gore. The reasons for this were obvious to those who traveled either of the two states (Ar or Tn). Frankly neither state got any benefits from having their people in High Office. As soon as Al and Bill left their respective states, they left them behind forever! Coming back and asking people you just stiffed to vote for you is not a good prospect for success. Cheated people tend to be a bit angry at who cheated them.
Regards Electronic Voting and cheating, well those remain serious issues. The problem is that electronic voting doesn't necessarily "work properly" just because the election went off without any evidence of misdeeds. Frankly electronic balloting eliminates the evidence of misdeeds. This is like the banks who announced that tellers quit making errors when they went to computers. The reality was that the banks just eliminated evidence of the errors by computers.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.