Online voting will have considerable increase in voter participation, especially among the urban class. Gujarat’s State Election Commission (SEC) has developed an online voting system with a process transformation from the ballot paper to EVM to online voting as one of the alternatives implemented in recently-held Gandhinagar local body elections. The precentage of voting increased considerably, he said.
Maharashtra has initiated the process of E-voting by providing the use of PCs, laptops and establishing E-voting kiosks.
The Karnataka SEC has set up a small committee to examine the integrity of the two patterns of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
The committee comprises urban development department, ITôBT and e-governance department, directorate of municipal administration and rural development and panchayath raj department officers.
The state election commission is proposing to target the urban local bodies general elections in 2013 on a trial basis by introducing E-voting. This will an additional facility for the voters apart from the regular voting pattern using ballot boxes and EVMs.
The year 2013 will see elections to 209 urban local bodies which include seven corporations namely Mysore, Bellary, Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum, Mangalore, Gulbarga and Davanagere.
The system allows for voting on the Internet and make it an inclusive process which can do away with voter apathy. What is being termed as apathy of the urban voters to the electoral process, is not actually apathy, added Chikkamath. It is a result of the irrational voters’ list.
The voters list, which is an important document and tool for smooth elections, is very different in the cities when compared to villages. In the rural areas, the voters list is fully rationalised since the parts are continuous and boundaries are well defined with polling area within those boundaries.
The voters list of urban areas stand in contrast to voters list of the rural area. Each part is a bunch of islands interspersed with the bunch of islands of other part which are contiguous to one another, said Chikkamath.
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Quelle/Source: Business Standard, 06.09.2011
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