Vote Using Your Mobile Phone: IIT Madras Demonstrates Remote Voting

Indian voters will be able to vote in elections using their mobile phones or by walking into any polling station across India if a promising student start-up incubated at IIT Madras takes shape. 

The start-up Plenome, co-founded by two students Anirudh Varna and Vijayaraja R besides faculty member Prof Prabhu Rajagopal had recently deployed this technology and successfully conducted  a student body election on campus. The students were able to log on themselves and cast their votes opening up the possibility of doing this from anywhere. The idea began amid COVID a few years ago to improve student voter turnout for campus elections.

The system uses  blockchain technology, which the co-founders say makes it absolutely secure. “Blockchain allows us to bring in immutability and trust in the electoral register. We are making it distributed, distributing it across computers making it trustworthy and tamper proof”, says Professor Prabhu Rajagopal.

Remote voting technology, the start up  believes has a worldwide market for political and non political elections in corporates, colleges, universities and residential communities.

However there are concerns, sections of voters can be intimidated to vote against their will under the remote system. “We offer a hybrid mode. What we mean by remote voting is, this allows anyone anywhere to walk into a booth and vote. For example a Delhi voter in Chennai on polling day can walk into a booth in Chennai and vote, which is  not possible now” said Anirudh Varna, Co-founder. He added “However we could allow army personnel and similar categories to use their own mobiles or computers to vote”.

With voter turnout seeing a dip across India in the ongoing general elections, largely due to apathy, Anirudh says “This would be a game-changer as there would be a good voter turnout as people can walk in anywhere. We saw an exceptional rise in IIT student elections compared to last year”. 

The team says the system allows only real time tracking of polling percentage and will not divulge details of who’s leading or trailing. Professor Rajagopal says blockchain transaction timing could be a challenge for this project and he hopes the speed will improve in course of time.

The start-up valued at 10 million dollars is actively raising funds. “We will also present our technology to the Election Commission of India”, said Co-founder Vijayaraja R.

Forty  two years ago, in 1982 India embraced technology for polling with introduction of  electronic voting machines (EVMs) that made ballot boxes  a history. As voter turnout shows a decline, remote voting could make a big difference and this solution could be a huge inspiration that could change the way India votes.