Dare to Dream beyond the Electronic Voting Machines………

Dare to Dream beyond the electronic Voting machine that’s the message it seems the renowned management guru Arindam Choudhary seems to be chanting these days. After ‘count your chickens’ and ‘Rok sako to rok lo’ his current fancy seems to be the core of the Indian democracy the way we cast our vote.

In a recent article for a leading daily he claimed that the best way to vote would be through SMS. Now this is not voting for your favorite Indian idol but for the guys who will make and pass the laws that affect us daily, in other words the legislature.

He was inspired by the way people were passionately voting for TVS Saregama a popular show that has launched the careers of the likes of Sunidhi Chauhan among others. So is an idea maybe it would sense but let us look at some statistics for India as we speak.

The 2004 General elections saw an estimated 675 million people who were eligible to vote. Out of this 370 million people actually voted in the general elections that is almost 55% voter turnout. These were to elect a 543 member executive.

Now the Indian mobile subscriber base has crossed 100 million mark that means about 1/6th of the electorate has access to any form of communication device to enable voting.
The question is what the rest are going to do?

The obvious point Mr. Choudhary is trying to make is convenience. If SMS voting in general elections are to be allowed then the voting percentage is bound to increase, as the only deterrent to people coming out to vote is the obvious inertia to go out to the voting centre.

That’s great!!!

Only one problem, can we really trust mobile technology to such an extent to allow something like SMS in elections a legal possibility?

For one it is easy to send bogus SMSes through the internet with the help of a proxy server.

But then we can restrict one vote per phone and ask the service providers to validate each vote through some automated process.
This mouth watering proposition would then create that sense of convenience and enable all those citizens lazy to go to the voting centers to vote.
I can already see most IT companies rubbing their hands in pure delight anticipating the billing that would come along if such a process is being automated. Already there are moves to centralize the counting of votes from the EVMs in order to remove the bias as to which area has voted for which candidate.
I can also imagine Mr. Sunil Mittal laughing all the way to the bank because of the sheer number of SMSes for this democratic circus.

But then there are only 100 million mobile subscribers…. What happens to remaining 500 million who have the legal right to vote?

So a single phone can be used for multiple votes then which may increase the confusion further.

It seems like a bright idea in the beginning but in light of these facts it not only seems impractical but also juvenile.

My suggestions Mr Chaudhary please go back to the book and count the votes and till then-
We will not Dare to Dream beyond the Electronic Voting machines……

By
Dr Vikram Venkateswaran
Sr Business consultant
CSC