Estonia’s internet voting stands apart as India scrutinises election IT

Most countries still run national elections with paper and pen, including technology leaders such as South Korea, Japan, Israel and Sweden, along with most of Europe and North America. The Netherlands, Italy and Ireland tried electronic voting machines in the first decade of this century and later dropped them over cost or a lack of broad public and political support. Germany’s brief experiment with machine voting was struck down by the Constitutional Court.

Among the countries that do use electronic voting, Estonia has gone a step further by offering internet voting as well. Some states use machines only for provincial or local polls, and a smaller group uses technology for biometric voter registration or for counting.

India was an early adopter. The Election Commission raised the idea of a voting machine in 1977, a prototype of today’s electronic voting machine was shown in 1979, and a pilot covered 50 polling stations in a Kerala assembly constituency in 1982. Electoral rolls were computerised by the end of the last century.

India’s machine was built as a standalone direct-recording device meant to mirror a paper ballot, including ballot secrecy and the possibility of a post-election audit if a court required one. A paper trail was added later so voters could check the record physically. Opposition parties have continued to question electronic voting and to call for a return to paper ballots. In 2010 a current leader of the ruling BJP, then a member of parliament, wrote Democracy at Risk: Can we trust our Electronic Voting Machines, with a foreword by a founder-leader of the party.

The technology behind the rolls has drawn far less protest until the recent special intensive revision controversy. Preparation and revision of the rolls rest on the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. In a 1971 judgement the Supreme Court held that entries can be challenged only through the machinery in the Act, unless a constitutional violation is alleged.

When special intensive revision work in West Bengal last year risked sliding into chaos, the Supreme Court directed judicial officers and tribunals to decide claims, objections and appeals, temporarily replacing the civilian officers named in the Act and the Rules. References to information technology in that legal framework are mainly about letting people file claims and objections electronically with the electoral registration officer, who alone decides them and then adds, deletes or corrects the roll. An appeal lies against that decision, but no other person or authority may substitute their own.

A reported case in Goa, in which some officers could not add eligible electors because they could not reach the IT platform, involved a small number of people but is treated as serious. Deleting a name requires still more caution. Form 7 may be filed only by someone already on the roll of the same constituency. Otherwise the local officer may act on their own initiative against ineligible entries, after notice and a personal hearing.

About 16 lakh appeals against inclusions are reported pending in West Bengal. The figure is striking, and the source of the appeals is unclear, including whether they are system-generated or algorithm-based in the way earlier “logical discrepancies” cases were. The Election Commission has said in a press release that it intends to review the ECINET system for compatibility with the law.

K F Wilfred, a former senior principal secretary of the Election Commission of India, writing in a personal capacity, argues that technology cannot block an officer from deciding applications that affect the right to vote, and that technical systems must not override statutory rules.