The Election Fee of India (EC) is an impartial and everlasting constitutional authority in India in command of organising free and truthful elections. Organising elections in a rustic with a inhabitants of over 1.4 billion individuals is an incredible endeavor, particularly once they happen frequently.
Whereas there is no such thing as a doubt that EC is innovating its day-to-day operations, be it implementing know-how like JARVIS to fight vote manipulation or a smartphone-based e-voting system, there, nonetheless, are quite a few areas the place it could possibly enhance, akin to checking hate speech and international trolls.
Vote-count manipulation
One of many foremost issues for the Election Fee at this time is to forestall vote counting manipulation. Many events have repeatedly alleged irregularities within the election course of, the first cause being the best way EVMs are used.
Whereas it could be years since we final used a poll paper, the method after the votes are forged is just about the identical in EVMs. Vinod Tiwari, lawyer and subject material professional, stated: “The supervisors on every counting desk manually document and tabulate the votes displayed on the EVMs, they then feed it into excel sheets which will increase the probabilities of manipulations. These are then fed into computer systems by authorities officers deployed for the aim.”
To plug such loopholes and collect real-time voting knowledge, in 2021, the Bihar State Election Fee used video analytics with optical character recognition for its panchayat elections. The info was generated by the polling physique utilizing the video analytics system saved on the State Election Fee’s servers. The system was constructed on JARVIS, a novel video analytics instrument that employed OCR and textual content recognition to determine candidates and tally votes straight from the digital camera feed by watching the EVM screens.
After the EVM knowledge was entered into the techniques, it was in contrast with the information obtained by way of the CCTV video to verify for inconsistencies. This was additionally the primary time video analytics was getting used throughout vote counting in an Indian election.
Smartphone-based e-voting
Elections in India differ from these in different nations because of the nation’s various atmosphere, which incorporates deserts within the west, freezing mountains within the north, and in depth forest cowl within the east. Voting authorities journey to distant locations to gather votes.
To counter this problem, a smartphone-based e-voting system will be carried out in far-flung areas. It has all the time been a dream for a lot of international locations to implement a smartphone-based e-voting system. Estonia, as an illustration, has launched a web based voting system, which has been profitable contemplating greater than 43% of Estonia’s inhabitants forged their vote on-line.
To take part within the elections, Estonian nationals log in with their nationwide ID, following which they get a downloaded file containing their poll. To keep up safety, e-voting doesn’t happen on election day. Estonia additionally employs blockchain know-how to forestall knowledge breach, therefore rising the digital house’s longevity.
India can tremendously profit from the know-how because it has one of many largest rising marketplace for smartphones with greater than 54% of the inhabitants utilizing them. The excellent news is, the EC is already working in that course.
The Election Fee teamed up with IIT-Madras and the Centre for Improvement of Superior Computing final yr to construct a protected e-voting system. Telangana additionally hosted the nation’s first dry run for smartphone-based e-voting final yr. For the trial, the Telangana State Election Fee used cutting-edge know-how akin to synthetic intelligence and blockchain ledgers.
Areas the place the EC can enhance
Up to now few years, India has skilled a rise in hate speech throughout election campaigns. A report claimed that India has seen a 500% rise in instances filed for hate speech previously seven years.
That is one space the place ECI and tech giants might collaborate. Corporations akin to Meta have already got the flexibility to filter out hate speech content material on its web sites. For instance, between January and March 2022, Meta took motion on greater than 15 million hate speech movies on Fb, 95% of which was found utilizing an AI system.
Moreover, with each successive election, the probabilities of different nations’ coordinated tweets influencing elections again dwelling enhance. For instance, the 2019 common elections have been trending not in India however in Pakistan too.
The EC can kind out and eradicate such international trolls looking for to unfold misinformation amongst potential voters on a number of social media websites utilizing an AI module. An analogous form of research will be seen right here.
Moreover, to realize a good information of voter turnout, EC can make use of an AI module akin to KCore Analytics, which can be utilized to anticipate voter turnout in any election. This may help common or state election authorities enhance effectivity and readiness, scale back wait instances, and assure easy elections.
