It is a shame that even in this age of technology one must present himself at a particular location for casting his vote. There are many who have to forgo their right to vote because they cannot do so. These include our defense personnel and also those who man the polling booths. The provision of postal ballot mostly remains on paper as a clause in some rule. Then there are a large number of Indians who are in transferable jobs, posted at far away places, and have not taken the pains of having themselves enrolled in the local voters' list. They would like to choose from candidates in their domicile only. In fact it is this reason and not any excessive lethargy that keeps large number of middle class people from voting.
And yet the solution is pretty simple. When capturing data for voter-id and voters' list capture a single piece of additional data - voter's mobile number. If so desired a cross check can be made with the service provider to make sure that it is in the name of the voter only. And now let the poor chap vote for his favorite candidate just as they do for participants in reality shows. He could be anywhere in the world and yet exercise his franchise.
An objection that could be raised is that of secrecy. It should be easy to handle this too through technology. Let the servers receiving the data be programmed to separate out the vote from the mobile number soon after receipt. The vote is to be used for counting while the mobile number list is to be used to eliminate voting more than once.
I am confident that technology can be put in place to take care of surge in data traffic on the election day. And once this is done we may be seeing a voter turnout close to cent percent.
Also think of the savings that can be made on setting up booth and arranging security. And the term booth capturing will be lost to future generations. For you cannot capture something that doesn't exist!
And yet the solution is pretty simple. When capturing data for voter-id and voters' list capture a single piece of additional data - voter's mobile number. If so desired a cross check can be made with the service provider to make sure that it is in the name of the voter only. And now let the poor chap vote for his favorite candidate just as they do for participants in reality shows. He could be anywhere in the world and yet exercise his franchise.
An objection that could be raised is that of secrecy. It should be easy to handle this too through technology. Let the servers receiving the data be programmed to separate out the vote from the mobile number soon after receipt. The vote is to be used for counting while the mobile number list is to be used to eliminate voting more than once.
I am confident that technology can be put in place to take care of surge in data traffic on the election day. And once this is done we may be seeing a voter turnout close to cent percent.
Also think of the savings that can be made on setting up booth and arranging security. And the term booth capturing will be lost to future generations. For you cannot capture something that doesn't exist!
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