After Moscow, Japan, and Sierra Leone, India is set to bring transparency to its voting systems with the blockchain-enabled voting platform introduced by three students of Malla Engineering College for Women in Telangana, which allows voters to vote without physically visiting the election booths.
The smart voting system backed by blockchain was introduced by the team ‘Yodha’ at the Hexathon Hyderabad, a 24-hour hackathon organized by HCCI for engineering students that won them the first position at the competition.
‘Yodha’ member Shivani told BL that the poll percentages in rural areas are always higher in comparison to the urban areas. She believes that long queues at polling booths are one of the primary reasons which lead to a decrease in voting in urban areas. The all-women team of three decided to tackle the issue and created a ‘smart voting system’. The team assured that their smart voting system was safe, backed by blockchain technology, which made it difficult to break into the product.
Post hackathon, the team has been asked to put the system into testing real-time in the gated societies. The Principal Secretary of IT and Industries Jayesh Ranjan also requested the team to meet the State Election Commission with the idea.
Currently, India has 900 million registered voters and nearly 2,000 political parties. It has always been a tedious task to conduct elections in mixed urban and rural economies. The voting system has transitioned from the traditional ballot boxes to the present EVMs ( Electronic Voting Machines) but has, however, failed to achieve fair voting amidst booth capturing and EVM tapering. The blockchain technology would bring a 100% accuracy in fair and transparent elections, ending all the unfair practices of the system.
