Voting from home: How Telangana is testing ‘online voting’ using Blockchain and AI

Although India adopted the electronic voting system many years back, in a phased manner between years 1998 to 2001, there have been accusations of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) being vulnerable to tampering. However it remains to be a major milestone in the history of electoral reforms in India apart from the widespread changes enforced by T N Seshan who served as the Chief Election Commissioner from 1990 to 1996.

There are more path-breaking reforms in the offing that will change the face of elections in India. In 2015-16, PM Narendra Modi suggested the idea of ‘One India One Election’, which was also endorsed by the then President, the late Pranab Mukherjee. The current Chief Election Commissioner, Sunil Arora has also showed the readiness of the election commission in conducting simultaneous elections in India. While the ‘One Nation One India’ election has been discussed and debated frequently, there is one path breaking election reform being worked upon silently in Telangana. Vote from Home or online voting. The pandemic has made people to work from home. Vote from home is likely to become a reality.

There are two basic challenges in enabling online voting. How to authenticate the voter? and securing the votes for counting, after the voting process is over. “How to authenticate a person and how to secure the vote after it is casted are two major challenges. These are being handled using Blockchain and AI, ML,” informs Rama Devi Lanka, Director – Emerging Technologies and OSD, Govt of Telangana. She was speaking in the panel discussion, ‘Exploring the myriad possibilities of emerging technologies in the Govt Sector’ organized as a part of the Digital Technology Sabha 2021.

The authentication can be done using Aadhaar and facial recognition subject to the voter being either live or comparing the photograph with the Voter ID or other databases.

The votes, after they are casted and authenticated will be stored on a Blockchain in an anonymised format. The cryptographic keys will be used to encrypt or decrypt the votes.

The Telangana State Election Commission had planned to test the online voting method in the last Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections held in December 2020, but the plan was later dropped.