Today, we had municipal council
elections in Mumbai and Thane. I went out to the polling booth around
9 am, and was out by 9:10, after going through the process of
- identifying myself (I showed my passport, but a driving licence, election ID card, or a PAN card (income-tax identification) would have done as well; and in later elections, a vast number may vote on the strength of the Unique biometric identification system that is being rolled out on a massive scale)
- getting the blob of indelible ink on my fingers, so that I cannot vote more than once, and then
- selecting two candidates - one female and one male, for our municipal ward on an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM).
Some observations:
First, the process was
super-smooth.
Second, the counting is
such a smooth process that oncce the EVMs from all over the ward are
assembled in one place, the counting of votes and announcing of
results would take a shorter time than it took me to write this
piece.
Third,
there
would be no arguments about the count, even if the difference was in
single digits. A welcome change from the ridiculous farce that the
Florida count in George W's Presidential election against Al Gore
just over a decade ago, in the world's most powerful and tech-savvy
democracy. One day, India's super-efficient Election Commission (EC)
will probably become a profit centre - taking up outsourced election
management deals.
Fourth, the EVMs are a
wonder of hardiness and simplicity. Hi-tech, yet low-cost. Easy to
configure, easy to understand, they have proved themselves time and
again in hugely different climate zones, and have reduced the cost of
election management by an order of magnitude, with lesser challenges
to election results, and lesser effort and time for counting. EVMs
are equipped with software that is deceptively sophisticated - for
example, I have read somewhere that the EVM is configured so that at
least 15 seconds need to elapse before the next vote is registered
and announced by an audible long beep. This makes mass-voting by
goons a time-consuming task - if the 15-second limit is breached more
than twice in succession, the EVM locks itself up, and can only be
unlocked by empowered EC officers.
Lots to learn from India's conduct of
that great ritual of democracy, called elections, don't you think?
