Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting votes.
Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone electronic voting machines (also called EVM) or computers connected to the Internet. It may encompass a range of Internet services, from basic transmission of tabulated results to full-function online voting through common connectable household devices. The degree of automation may be limited to marking a paper ballot, or may be a comprehensive system of vote input, vote recording, data encryption and transmission to servers, and consolidation and tabulation of election results.
A worthy e-voting system must perform most of these tasks while complying with a set of standards established by regulatory bodies, and must also be capable to deal successfully with strong requirements associated with security, accuracy, integrity, swiftness, privacy, auditability, accessibility, cost-effectiveness, scalability and ecological sustainability.
Electronic voting technology can include punched cards, optical scan voting systems and specialized voting kiosks (including self-contained direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DRE). It can also involve the transmission of ballots and votes via telephones, private computer networks, or the Internet.
In general, two main types of e-voting can be identified:
e-voting which is physically supervised by representatives of governmental or independent electoral authorities (e.g. electronic voting machines located at polling stations); remote e-voting via the Internet (also called i-voting) where the voter submits their votes electronically to the election authorities, from any location.
Electronic voting technology intends to speed the counting of ballots, reduce the cost of paying staff to count votes manually and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. Also in the long term, expenses are expected to decrease. Results can be reported and published faster. Voters save time and cost by being able to vote independently from their location. This may increase overall voter turnout. The citizen groups benefiting most from electronic elections are the ones living abroad, citizens living in rural areas far away from polling stations and the disabled with mobility impairments. For the country, electronic voting may improve the country's image and serve as promotion.
EVMs can record a maximum of 3,840 votes and can cater to a maximum of 64 candidates. There are 543 Lok Sabha constituencies and an equivalent number of seats in the Lower House of Parliament. To win a simple majority more than 272 seats are therefore needed. BJP won 51.9 percent of all seats in the 2014 elections.
In the 2014 election, 66.4 percent out of the total electorate of 834,101,479 voted.
The Election Commission of India is very proud of this system and stated that the machines are perfect and tamperproof. Those overly positive remarks caused skepticism amongst political parties, activists, academics and voting security specialists. It has been argued that the simplicity of EVM design has negative implications as well when it comes to questions of transparency, verifiability and the overall security of the election practice.
" />Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting votes.
Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone electronic voting machines (also called EVM) or computers connected to the Internet. It may encompass a range of Internet services, from basic transmission of tabulated results to full-function online voting through common connectable household devices. The degree of automation may be limited to marking a paper ballot, or may be a comprehensive system of vote input, vote recording, data encryption and transmission to servers, and consolidation and tabulation of election results.
A worthy e-voting system must perform most of these tasks while complying with a set of standards established by regulatory bodies, and must also be capable to deal successfully with strong requirements associated with security, accuracy, integrity, swiftness, privacy, auditability, accessibility, cost-effectiveness, scalability and ecological sustainability.
Electronic voting technology can include punched cards, optical scan voting systems and specialized voting kiosks (including self-contained direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DRE). It can also involve the transmission of ballots and votes via telephones, private computer networks, or the Internet.
In general, two main types of e-voting can be identified:
e-voting which is physically supervised by representatives of governmental or independent electoral authorities (e.g. electronic voting machines located at polling stations); remote e-voting via the Internet (also called i-voting) where the voter submits their votes electronically to the election authorities, from any location.
Electronic voting technology intends to speed the counting of ballots, reduce the cost of paying staff to count votes manually and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. Also in the long term, expenses are expected to decrease. Results can be reported and published faster. Voters save time and cost by being able to vote independently from their location. This may increase overall voter turnout. The citizen groups benefiting most from electronic elections are the ones living abroad, citizens living in rural areas far away from polling stations and the disabled with mobility impairments. For the country, electronic voting may improve the country's image and serve as promotion.
EVMs can record a maximum of 3,840 votes and can cater to a maximum of 64 candidates. There are 543 Lok Sabha constituencies and an equivalent number of seats in the Lower House of Parliament. To win a simple majority more than 272 seats are therefore needed. BJP won 51.9 percent of all seats in the 2014 elections.
In the 2014 election, 66.4 percent out of the total electorate of 834,101,479 voted.
The Election Commission of India is very proud of this system and stated that the machines are perfect and tamperproof. Those overly positive remarks caused skepticism amongst political parties, activists, academics and voting security specialists. It has been argued that the simplicity of EVM design has negative implications as well when it comes to questions of transparency, verifiability and the overall security of the election practice.
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