India: Electronic voting machine slip will help verify your vote | The Times of India

This time, voters in Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency will be able to verify if their vote has been cast right. Once they press the button of their choice, a slip will be generated which will indicate the vote that has been actually cast by the EVM when the voter pressed the button. On a pilot basis, the Election Commission of India (ECI) is introducing ‘Voter Verifiable Paper Auditor Trail’ (VVPAT) system in eight Lok Sabha constituencies across the country and Gandhinagar is one of them. The VVPAT machine will be attached with the EVM and will generate slips like the receipts one gets at ATMs.

India: Election Officials Brave Hungry Crocodiles to Reach Voters | Wall Street Journal

The midday sun was blazing when Biswajit Roy, a middle-aged Indian high-school teacher, gingerly pulled himself, and two voting machines, into a modified dugout canoe. His mission: Traverse crocodile-infested mangrove swamps, cross a stretch of open sea and then hike through a jungle to the remote village of Hanspuri so its 261 voters could cast ballots in India’s national elections. “When I got my orders, I was thunderstruck,” said Mr. Roy, 41 years old, an election officer in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. India is the world’s largest democracy, with 814.5 million registered voters. When election time rolls around, the government and its foot soldiers go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that citizens in this largely rural and infrastructure-challenged country can participate. Put another way, the national elections trigger the world’s biggest obstacle course for some Indian election officials.

India: 10 Facts You Must Know About Electronic Voting Machines In Elections 2014 | MensXP

If you didn’t know already, electronic Voting Machines (or EVMs) are the technology that registers our votes. If you are a first-time voter, you might be naturally curious about these machines. Even for an experienced voter, knowing what goes behind the working of an EVM is essential knowledge. Here are a few things you must know about EVMs.

1. An EVM consists of a Control Unit and a Balloting Unit joined together by a cable. The Control Unit belongs to a polling officer while the Balloting Unit is kept in a compartment to cast votes. This basically indicates that unless the polling officer validates your identity, you will not be able to cast a vote .

2. Because of the rampant electricity shortage in the country, EVMs are equipped to run without them. EVMs typically run on 6V alkaline batteries to overcome this problem and ensure voting passes peacefully in electricity-scant areas.

India: India Struggles With Rebel Threats During Election | ABC News

Indians cast ballots Thursday on the biggest day of voting in the country’s weekslong general election, streaming into polling stations even in areas where rebels threatened violence over the plight of India’s marginalized and poor. Nationwide voting began April 7 and runs through May 12, with results for the 543-seat lower house of Parliament to be announced four days later. Among the 13 key states voting Thursday was Chhattisgarh, now the center of India’s four-decade Maoist insurgency. “I want a good life for my baby, security and peace,” said Neha Ransure, a 25-year-old woman who was voting in the Chhattisgarh town of Rajnandgaon despite fears of violence. “The rebels are bad. They kill our soldiers. I don’t go outside of town. It is too dangerous.” Rebels always threaten to disrupt Indian elections, and this year is no different. On Saturday, insurgents killed 14 people in two separate attacks in Chhattisgarh in a campaign to disrupt the polls. The dead consisted of five election officials, five paramilitary soldiers, two bus drivers and two civilians. Last month, rebels in Chhattisgarh killed 15 law enforcement officers and one civilian in their deadliest raid in almost a year.

India: Voters lured by cash handouts, drugs, bootleg liquor | Reuters

Indian election officials have seized a record $36 million (21.52 million pounds) dollars of cash concealed in cars, private planes and even ambulances that they say was destined to buy off voters and pay for expenses over and above the spending limit. Opinion polls show the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies coming to power thanks to the popularity of Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi and widespread disgust with the Congress party, whose last years in power have been dogged by corruption scandals and a sharp economic slowdown. Despite the dramatic political change it could bring, the 2014 election would appear to be the same grubby game of cash-for-votes that has marred previous ballots in the world’s largest democracy, only this time on a far bigger scale. Cash seized in the three weeks since the staggered election was announced has already surpassed the 1.9 billion rupees for the whole of the 2009 ballot period, the commission said. Voting in this year’s election began on April 7 and winds up on May 12.

India: India’s Briefcase-Sized Voting Machines | The Atlantic

Holding India’s titanic general election is no simple task. Voting is broken down into nine phases—the fifth and largest of which is scheduled for this Thursday—that are spread over six weeks. Over the six weeks, an army of 11 million election officials and security forces will staff and operate more than 935,000 polling stations in India’s 543 electoral constituencies, where they will serve almost 815 million registered Indian voters. Central to this undertaking are India’s 1.7 million electronic voting machines, or EVMs, the portable, affordable, and highly durable systems that help this massive exercise in democracy run smoothly. Each EVM comes in two parts. The control unit remains with election officials at each polling place and connects by cable to the balloting unit. When a voter enters a polling booth, an official activates the balloting unit. The voter then presses one of up to 64 blue buttons next to each candidate’s name and political-party symbol to cast his or her vote. … EVMs help India overcome a number of electoral challenges. The machines are compact and portable, in contrast to bulkier booth-sized voting machines in the United States and elsewhere. They are also built to withstand India’s diverse and sometimes-harsh climate. Since they run on two 6-volt alkaline batteries, EVMs can be readily used in rural India, where two-thirds of the country’s 1.2 billion citizens live, and other areas with limited or no electricity.

India: Silicon Valley is using India’s elections as a PR exercise—and it’s working | Quartz

If you lived in New Delhi and went out to vote today, you could have used Uber’s recently launched India service to get there and back for free. All you’d need to do is enter a promo code into the Uber app to get two rides worth up to Rs 1,000 ($16.60) between 7am and 7pm. You wouldn’t even need to vote. And the thing is, it actually wouldn’t make much sense to use the codes to vote—the maximum distance a voter needs to travel to get to a polling booth in Delhi is 2 km (1.25 miles), a much smaller fare. The California-based transportation network’s promotional deal may end up having the perverse effect of encouraging voters to skip voting and go see friends instead—specially since election day is a holiday in Delhi. Uber probably has good intentions, even if the execution leads to undesirable outcomes. Its Silicon Valley peers Google and Facebook are also using India’s elections as an excuse to build their brands, but their exploitation of the aura of significance that surrounds voting in the world’s largest democracy is arguably more pernicious. Those companies are using the elections to sell a beguiling myth: that the internet promotes democracy. The reality is more complicated, as the outcome of the Arab Spring has shown, and as polemical thinkers such as Evgeny Morozov have argued.

India: Why Facebook Is So Interested In India’s Elections | Buzzfeed

India’s general election this year will be the largest democratic election that has ever been conducted in the world — and also one of Facebook’s most ambitious pushes into electoral politics. As Indians head to the polls over the next month to elect a new ruling party and prime minister, Facebook has launched a multifaceted campaign in the country, exploring what people want from Facebook on a political level and introducing new features, as likes have surged for candidates. The scale of the elections, estimated to cost $600 million, is staggering. Ballots will be cast at 930,000 polling booths and 1.4 million electronic voting machines, with 11 million people — both civilians and government officials — helping facilitate. More than 100 million Indians are newly eligible to vote, bringing the total Indian electorate up to 815 million people. Half of India’s total population is younger than 24, and about 150 million people in India’s total electoral pool are first-time voters. According to some estimates, more than 40% of India’s eligible voters are between 18 and 35 years old.

India: Election Commission’s belated realisation, faulty Electronic Voting Machines waver voters’ faith in fair polls | Daily Bhaskar

Free and fair elections are central to the democratic ethos of any country. This includes fair, accurate and transparent electoral process with outcomes that can be independently verified. Behind this gigantic process is a little secret that ensures that the polls are indeed honest. The little white box known as the Electronic Voting Machine or simply EVM is the finest innovation of modern India. But this myth was shattered when last week an electronic voting machine during a mandatory mock poll in Jorhat turned out to be faulty, every time a button was pressed, the vote went in favour of BJP. What happened to the claim that the Indian EVM is one of the most refined systems in the world? It was believed that not even the US elections have been known to be so refined in its ability to gather all the votes in such a clean manner.

India: World’s largest election begins in India | Associated Press

India started the world’s largest election Monday, sealing international borders along its remote northeast while voters made their way past lush rice paddies and over rickety bamboo bridges and pot-holed dirt roads to reach the polls. The country’s 814 million electorate will vote in stages over the next five weeks — a staggered approach made necessary by India’s vast size — to choose representatives to its 543-seat lower house of parliament. The main Hindu nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party led by prime ministerial hopeful Narendra Modi is seen as the biggest threat to the now-governing Congress Party and its allies. Results from all 935,000 polling stations are expected on May 16.

India: A Preview of India’s 2014 Election: How Will 800 Million People Choose Their Next Leader? | International Business Times

India will embark Monday on the biggest democratic election in global history with some 815 million eligible voters, more than all the people in the U.S., Russia, Japan and Nigeria combined, casting ballots in a six-week process to elect a prime minister. It’s a logistics tour de force: Voting will occur at 930,000 polling stations across India from April 7 to May 12. It’s also more complex than an election in a direct democracy. Rather, based on the British parliamentary system, Indians vote for 543 legislators who then appoint a prime minister from the party that amasses a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament, where each state in India has proportional representation, as in the U.S. House of Representatives. The independent Election Commission of India will count votes and announce results on May 16. If no one party has amassed a simple majority in parliament on that date, parties will have only a few weeks of frantic negotiations in which to form alliances and name a new prime minister.

India: India’s new voters: We are connected | The Economist

India’s general election, the world’s biggest democratic exercise, kicks off on April 7th. Voting will take place, across 35 states and territories, until May 12th. The country has a Westminster-style system: it is divided into 543 roughly equal constituencies (typically with some 1.5m voters), each sending a single MP to parliament. The whole electorate is a whopping 815m people, the populations of America and the EU combined. A decade of rising incomes, on the back of a growth spurt, has improved many lives. Yet opinion polls show that voters everywhere are grumpy. One released this week by the Pew Research Centre found 70% dissatisfied with India’s prospects and more than eight out of ten bitterly gloomy about economic matters. “Everything is a problem for the Indian voter,” concludes Bruce Stokes of Pew.

India: Voting while in the Army | The Hindu

Vote bank politics is a commonly bandied about expression in the election season, which is no surprise. But a new vote bank of Armed Forces personnel is now looking a step closer to reality with the Supreme Court directing the Election Commission (EC) to allow defence personnel to vote as general voters in peace stations. This is somewhat unusual. The Supreme Court merely reiterated the law it laid down in an earlier judgment in 1971, though the circumstances of that case were somewhat different. The Representation of the People Act, 1950 defines the term ‘ordinarily resident’ in Section 20, a qualification required to get registered as a voter. Armed forces personnel are among the few categories of people defined as persons with ‘service qualification’ in Section 20(8) and are given a special dispensation in Section 20(3) and Section 20(5). This category can declare while living at a place ‘ordinarily resident’ status at another place where they would have normally lived, if it were not for the exigencies of service. Implicit faith was to be placed on their declaration and they would be registered at the place they indicated as their place of ordinary residence, most likely their native place, and as a corollary the place of their posting could not be their ordinary place of residence.

India: Poll officers offer fake voter IDs for Rs 1,000 | India Today

As the country prepares itself for the biggest dance of democracy, there are people who have made all the arrangements to derail the democratic process. In a startling revelation, it has emerged that polling officials in Delhi and NCR are ready to facilitate bogus voting in exchange for money. Even though NCP chief Sharad Pawar termed his comments-urging supporters to vote twice-as a joke, a sting operation by Aaj Tak revealed that such an arrangement is possible and politicians can use this to buy votes in the coming Lok Sabha elections. Booth Level officers (BLOs), who are responsible to ensure that no fake votes are cast on the polling day, have accepted on hidden camera that they can provide fake voter ID for as low as Rs.1,000-1,500 per person.

India: Green chilli, chappals and stethoscope among 85 free symbols for Independent candidates | The Indian Express

Eatables such as green chilli, carrot, cauliflower and cake, daily use items such as nail cutter, chappals, purse and helmets besides instruments and appliances such as stethoscope, plate stand, dish-antenna and air-conditioner form an interesting list of more than 85 free symbols to be allotted to Independent candidates in Lok Sabha fray. The list also has symbols of different sports including carom, chess-board, cricket bat and batsman for poll aspirants willing to accept these symbols. As many as 36 candidates filed their nominations as independents from Pune Lok Sabha seat on the last date of the filing of nominations on Wednesday, said election authorities. The election commission has set aside reserved symbols for national parties including BJP, Congress, NCP, CPI, CPI (M), BSP, Shiv Sena and MNS.

India: India’s Record-Breaking 2014 Elections | The Diplomat

India’s upcoming general election will be the largest democratic event in history, with more than 814 million people entitled to vote to decide the country’s 16th government. This, however, is not the only record that will be broken when the world’s largest democracy goes to the polls. According to the Centre for Media Studies, Indian politicians will spend as much as $4.9 billion during the electoral contest, which will end in May. The estimate makes this year’s general election the second most expensive of all time, behind only the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign in which, according to the U.S. presidential commission, $7 billion was spent. India’s electoral rules only allow candidates to spend $114,000 to contest parliamentary seats. With 543 seats available in India’s lower house, the total spent should amount to just below $62 million. But the actual costs of fighting an election are much higher, and a combination of fundraising (online and from the Indian diaspora), advertising costs and bribery contribute to the $4.9 billion estimate.

India: India set to challenge U.S. for election-spending record | Reuters

Indian politicians are expected to spend around $5 billion on campaigning for elections next month – a sum second only to the most expensive U.S. presidential campaign of all time – in a splurge that could give India’s floundering economy a temporary boost. India’s campaign spend, which can include cash stuffed in envelopes as well as multi-million-dollar ad campaigns, has been estimated at 300 billion rupees ($4.9 billion) by the Centre for Media Studies, which tracks spending. That is triple the expenditure the centre said was spent on electioneering in the last national poll in 2009 – partly a reflection of a high-octane campaign by pro-business opposition candidate for prime minister, Narendra Modi, who started nationwide rallies and advertising last year.

India: Election Commission to introduce VVPAT countrywide on experimental basis | Moneycontrol

The Election Commission will introduce Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) countrywide on experimental basis to ensure a fair Lok Sabha poll. The VVPAT is a paper slip which will come out of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) once a voter casts his vote, showing which symbol and candidate the vote has been cast for. The slip will be automatically dropped in a sealed box attached to the EVM for use by the EC, Chief Electoral Officer in West Bengal Sunil Gupta today said.

India: India says elections to begin April 7, with voting held in stages | Associated Press

India said Wednesday it will begin national elections on April 7, kicking off a month-long contest in the largest democracy in the world. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Narendra Modi, has the momentum heading into the polls. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center said 63 percent of Indians prefer the Hindu nationalist BJP over the incumbent Congress party, which has dominated Indian politics for most of the country’s history since independence in 1947. The election is held over several weeks for reasons of logistics and safety in a country of 1.2 billion. More than 810 million people are eligible to vote this year — an increase of 100 million from five years ago, according to the Election Commission. Vote counting will be held May 16 and most results are expected the same day, Chief Election Commissioner V.S. Sampath said.

India: Election Commission considering online voting arrangement for non-residents | The Economic Times

It’s not likely to happen this general election but non-resident Indians (NRIs) may soon be able to cast their ballot, even if they’re not back home. The Election Commission of India (EC) is considering a proposal to allow this following many representations made by expatriate Indians. Currently, NRIs can only vote in their constituencies. This regulation is seen as restrictive as only 11,844 Indians living abroad have registered as voters, the maximum being from Kerala. Of these, barely anyone has traveled to the country to exercise his or her franchise.

India: Electoral commission dumps Google over spying fears | iTnews

The Indian Election Commission dropped plans on Thursday to partner Google on a project to ease voter access to information, after a backlash against the move from campaigners who fear Google and the US government could use it for spying. India, the world’s largest democracy, will go to the polls in a general election due by May. Google, the world’s No.1 search engine, had pitched a project to the Election Commission to create a simpler and faster search tool for voters to check whether they were registered correctly or not. But the plan was opposed by the Indian Infosec Consortium, a government and private sector-backed alliance of cyber security experts, who feared Google would collaborate with “American agencies” for espionage purposes.

India: Election Commission drops tie-up plan with Google | Business Line

The Election Commission has decided not to pursue its proposed tie-up with internet giant Google after concerns over national security were raised from several quarters, including major parties. US-based Google had earlier this week made a formal presentation to the Election Commission proposing a tie-up with it for voter facilitation services ahead of Lok Sabha elections. The Commission, at its meeting here today which was attended by Chief Election Commissioner V.S. Sampath and Election Commissioners H.S. Brahma and S.N.A. Zaidi, deliberated on the issue and decided not to go ahead. “After due consideration, the Commission has decided not to pursue it any further,” said an EC official.

India: Election Commission drops plan to partner Google after spying fears | Reuters

The Election Commission dropped plans on Thursday to partner Google Inc on a project to ease voter access to information, after a backlash against the move from campaigners who fear Google and the U.S. government could use it for spying. India, the world’s largest democracy, will go to the polls in a general election due by May. Google (GOOG.O), the world’s No.1 search engine, had pitched a project to the Election Commission to create a simpler and faster search tool for voters to check whether they were registered correctly or not. But the plan was opposed by the Indian Infosec Consortium, a government and private sector-backed alliance of cyber security experts, who feared Google would collaborate with “American agencies” for espionage purposes. The Election Commission did not officially give a reason for dropping the plan. But an official, who did not want to be named, told Reuters that Google’s proposal was not a major improvement on its existing website, and that Google’s involvement had drawn criticism in India.

India: Tie-up of Election Commission and Google sparks security fears | Hindustan Times

Indian software professionals have expressed their worry at the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) project to register fresh voters by using the services of software behemoth Google. Warning that data collected by Google has been frequently used by American spy agency, the NSA, this consortium of professionals has sent a letter to the chief election commissioner pointing out this “security breach. At a time when the world is concerned about the security of sensitive data, a Constitutional authority like the ECI is making it readily available to a foreign company,” Jiten Jain from the consortium. “The government has said that no sensitive data of Indians will ever be shared with foreign servers. But the ECI will hand over names, IP addresses, cell phone numbers, residential addresses and all other kinds of sensitive data to Google for this project. This should have been cleared by Indian security agencies first.”

India: Google-Election Commission tie-up talks alarm cyber group | Business Standard

Cyber security professionals have raised an alarm about the potential danger to national security, even before the Election Commission (EC) formally announces a tie-up with US technology giant Google. The poll panel has been in talks with the internet firm’s India office to allow voters to easily search for their details on electoral lists. The company had also proposed to build an application for voters to get road directions to polling stations through Google Maps. It was also reported last week that Google would help EC manage online voter registrations before the Lok Sabha elections this year. “This will lead to a goldmine of intelligence,” said Jiten Jain, a member of the Indian Infosec Consortium (IIC), an association of professionals working in the field of cyber security and are critics of the proposed relationship between EC and Google. He added that citizens will have to provide their email addresses and mobile numbers for new voter registrations. That, combined with Google’s other technology offerings like email, search, maps, etc could aid in building profiles of voters which could invade their privacy.

India: Election Commission plans introducing downloadable ballot papers for forces | Business Standard

For the first time, lakhs of paramilitary soldiers may be able to download the ballot paper from the Internet, cast their vote and send it by post to the returning officer in the next Lok Sabha elections. At the initiative of the paramilitary forces like BSF and CRPF, the Election Commission is working on such a plan, which would make postal voting much easier for these force personnel who would be deployed in remote parts of the country. “This (downloadable ballot papers) is actually a suggestion, which we are right now looking at seriously for the defence personnel,” Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath said, adding that such a move would reduce the one way travel time of postal ballots during the elections.

India: Congressmen complain to PM about alleged tampering with Electronic Voting Machines | The Times of India

The issue of alleged tampering with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in the state assembly elections is being raised by the Congress in a serious manner. After the party’s state unit made a written complaint to the Election Commission early this week, the Congress candidate from Sawai Madhopur constituency Danish Abrar has sent a complaint to the prime minister’s office. Abrar, who lost to BJP’s Diya Kumari, has asked for an examination of the EVMs used and an investigation into the alleged tampering with the machines. Abrar, along with his party colleague Prashant Bairwa, who lost from Tonk’s Niwai seat, addressed a press conference in this regard on Saturday.

India: Electronic Voting Machines were tampered with, alleges Rajasthan Congress | The Hindu

Days after the Congress suffered a humiliating defeat in the Rajasthan Assembly election, the party demanded an enquiry into Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) programmed in Ahmedabad that were used during the polls. The Congress’s Legal and Election management committee filed a complaint with the Election Commission on Thursday, casting aspersions on the functionality of the EVMs, and seeking a probe by high-level technical experts into their programming. “There have been complaints from several party workers and candidates belonging to different Assembly constituencies that the programming for these machines had been tampered with,” Sushil Sharma, president of the Congress’s legal and election management committee.

India: Citizen surge: Election Commission ensures that low voting percentages are a thing of the past | The Week

Even before the results are announced, the latest Assembly elections have thrown up a pleasant surprise. The voting percentages in all the states have been extraordinary. Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, notorious for low turnouts, recorded 74.5 per cent and 71 per cent, respectively. Chhattisgarh defied threats from Maoists to register an impressive 77 per cent, the highest ever for the state. Delhi, too, registered its best-ever voting performance at 66 per cent. Suddenly, low voting percentages are becoming a thing of the past and the Indian voters appear to be more involved and informed. The most important reason behind this surge is the Election Commission’s aggressive campaign to enrol new voters, especially women and the youth. The systematic voters’ education and electoral participation (SVEEP) wing of the commission, opened in 2009, has been tasked with expanding the registration of eligible voters, addressing gender gaps and ensuring more participation of the youth. “The programme has been undertaken across the country and the increase in turnout has varied from around 10 per cent in lower turnout states to 2-3 per cent in traditionally high turnout states,” said Chief Election Commissioner V.S. Sampath. For the first time, the commission deployed ‘awareness observers’ in these elections. In all, 47 of them were put on the job in the five states for two weeks before the elections to motivate voters.

India: ‘None of the Above’ Polls Poorly | Wall Street Journal

For the first time in elections in India, voters who cast ballots in recent assembly polls had the option to reject all candidates and vote for “none of the above.” The choice to do so appears to have been less popular than anticipated. Across Delhi, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, only 1.67 million voters out of a combined electorate of 115 million, chose to assert their right to register contempt for all candidates, according to figures released Sunday by the Election Commission of India. Vote counting in Mizoram where elections were also held in November began Monday in the predominantly Christian state because of petitions by church officials who said that Sunday should be reserved for religious observance. The Congress party retained power in the tiny northeastern state, where results, released by the Election Commission of India Monday, showed that the “none of the above” option was used by less than 1% (around 3,800) of voters.