Can: My Election Wish 2009 #indiavotes

India is going to be voting soon. I have been thinking on how we can improve the whole political process and quality of candidates. The systemic issue with our voting process has been that educated people have stayed away from voting. IMHO, the reason being they don’t want to sweat out standing in a line or going to the nearest booth for lack of simple amenities.

I think there is a simple solution to the above available via technology. EC should make available voting via internet. If this made available, educated people who have access to internet and feel unmotivated to visit the election booth can vote via a very personal device – their computer. this would reduce burden on the voting booths and hence the expenditure for EC. also, the chances of fradulent/ bogus voting would be reduced as it will be difficult for anti-social elements to reach everyone’s home (rather than the voting booth).

I have heard people say that internet is not available for everyone. I agree and I am proposing this as an additional channel that people can vote through. I am NOT suggesting rooting out our traditional voting booths.

the next issue is that of verifying identity of people who vote via internet. until the National Social Security No. (NSSN) is not implemented, one could use PAN ID for this. A large section of people in India, who are educated, already posses their PAN ID. I already submitted my tax returns online last year. So, our income tax infrastructure is already ready for online usage. EC could simply link up the PAN IDs and make it available for voting.
to avoid duplicacy, EC would still need to link up Voter’s ID with PAN ID. or it could bring out a notification mentioning people without voter’s ID could self-declare and use PAN ID to vote online.

to me the challenge for implementing the above solution is political rather than technical. there exists little to NO political will to get this system implemented.

This is my election wish for the year!

What do you think?