Remote Electronic Voting Machine: Benefits and Challenges

What’s in today’s article?

• Why in news?
• Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM)
• What is Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM)?
• Why EC is keen on remote voting for domestic migrants?
• What will be the benefits of RVM?
• Different challenges that would have been faced by RVM
• News Summary: Election Commission shelves remote voting plan for now
• Some of the questions raised by the political parties

 

Why in news?

• The Election Commission’s proposal to use specially-designed Remote Voting Machines (RVMs) has been shelved for now.
  • In December 2022, EC had announced that it is ready to pilot remote voting for domestic migrants.
  • The EC had invited political parties for a discussion and demonstration of the RVM in January 2023.
    • But the demonstration was not held as nearly all parties objected to the idea.
• This proposal has been dropped temporarily as nearly all political parties are opposed to it.

 

Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM)

What is Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM)?

• In order to enable remote voting for domestic migrants, a technological solution was proposed in the form of Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM).
• RVM relies on the creation of a robust electoral roll and identification mechanisms (to stop duplicate voting), and allow voters to vote remotely, in a safe and controlled environment.
• It was developed with the assistance of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL). It is based on the currently used EVM system.

 

Why EC is keen on remote voting for domestic migrants?

• Migration based disenfranchisement is indeed not an option in the age of technological advancement. 
• The voter turnout in General Elections 2019 was 67.4 % and the Election Commission of India is concerned about the issue of over 30 Crore electors not exercising their franchise and also differential voter turnout in various States/UTs.
• One key reason for low voter turnout could be migrants not going home to exercise their franchise. 
  • As per Census 2011, 45.36 crore Indians, or 37% of the population are migrants, but 75% of them are migrants on account of marriage or other family-related reasons.
• The poll panel proposes to address this by using technology so that migrants can vote remotely and also stay connected with their roots.

 

What will be the benefits of RVM?

• Many times, migrants are reluctant to get themselves enrolled at their place of work for various reasons such as: 
  • frequently changing residences, 
  • not enough social and emotional connect with the issues of area of migration, 
  • unwillingness to get their name deleted in electoral roll of their home/native constituencies as they have permanent residence/property etc.
• The remote voting initiative, if implemented, can lead to a social transformation for the migrants and connect with their roots. It will also result in better voter turnouts.

 

Different challenges that would have been faced by RVM

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Image caption: Challenges to RVM

 

• There is no accurate number of migrants. Also, in 2017, the ECI had told the SC that it was not feasible to track movement of domestic migrants to allow remote voting.
• Also, migrants are not a uniform and defined class, with fluid identities, locations and situations.

 

News Summary: Election Commission shelves remote voting plan for now

• Nearly all political parties are opposed to the Election Commission’s proposal to use specially-designed Remote Voting Machines (RVMs).
  • RVMs were proposed to enable migrants to cast their votes from outside their home constituencies.

 

Some of the questions raised by the political parties

• If elections are going on in one state and there are voters from that state spread across another state, how many booths will be set up? 
• Will the Model Code of Conduct be applied in the second state, even though it is not going to polls in normal course?
• There was no survey of migrant workers in the country, how would they be identified?
• Against this background, it was expressed that there is need for an in-depth analysis before launching such project.

 

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Q1) How many votes can be cast in EVM?

An EVM can be used to record a maximum of 2000 votes and can cater to a maximum of 64 candidates including NOTA. There is provision for 16 candidates in a Balloting Unit.

 

Q2) What is VVPAT?

VVPAT or Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail is the machine that helps to keep a paper audit trail of the votes cast. It prints a paper slip of the candidate a person votes for with the name, serial number and symbol of the party.

 

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Source: Most parties object, Election Commission shelves remote voting plan for now | PIB | Times Of India