Santhrupti Shankar

Field of Invention

Embodiments of the present invention/disclosure relate to an Electronic Voting System with a biometric verification method that authenticates the identity of the voter as well as checks if the voter has already exercised his/her franchise before allowing him/her access to cast his/her vote. This prevents fake as well as multiple votes.

Also, through the instant counting facility utilised by this system and method, the votes that are cast for each party/candidate are totalled, on the day of election itself without any human intervention, and the results of voting are transmitted through a network that is connected either by telephone lines or radio waves.

More particularly, the present invention discloses a biometric registration system, which is employed in the enrolment of eligible voters, as well as a method for biometric verification of their identity prior to voting.

The system and method may be utilised for verification, and/or for participation, including pre-registration of electronic voters and for their participation in electronic voting.

Background

India is a young democracy and is rich in its diverse demographic dividend of eligible voters. For our democracy to be truly vibrant, inclusive and representative of the voices of the citizens of this country, it is imperative that the elections conducted should be free and fair, and should see maximum participation. Voting is a method through which the citizens express their opinions on matters that they most care about, by selecting and supporting those candidates who are capable of representing their interests in the legislature.

In this context, some unscrupulous elements resort to techniques like casting fake and/or multiple votes. This amounts to depriving other eligible citizens of their legitimate and constitutional voting rights due to the fraudulent practices of a few anti-social elements. This deprivation means that the voices of the citizens are suppressed, thereby, defeating the very purpose of conducting elections – to respect the choice of the people in a democracy. This goes against the principles of democracy and citizenship rights.

Earlier, in all elections, whether state or central, that were conducted in India, the voters cast their vote by marking a stamp against the symbol of the candidate or party of their choice, folding the ballot paper as per prescribed method and dropping this ballot paper into the ballot boxes. The main drawbacks in this method, apart from it being very time-consuming, are: the risk of booth capturing, replacement of original ballot boxes with ballot boxes containing pre-filled ballot papers, labour-intensive (for counting and recounting of votes), prone to errors etc.

To overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks, EVMs or Electronic Voting Machines (Patent No. 199087 granted on 6^th March 2006 to M/s Electronics Corporation of India with inventor as Gadde Raja Koteswara Rao) were introduced. EVMs were used, for the first time, in the bye-elections in North Paravur Assembly Constituency in Kerala in 1982, in limited number of polling stations. In 1999, they were used for the first time in the general election (entire state) to the assembly of Goa. In 2003, EVMs were used in all bye-elections and state elections. Post this; the Election Commission of India used the EVMs for Lok Sabha elections in 2004. However, since their introduction, EVMs as well as their usage have been the subject of numerous court cases in India due to questions on their reliability and security.

In response to Pune-based activist Rekha Gore’s application under Right to Information, it was revealed that the Detached Memory Module (DMM) chips that were used in the EVMs used in the municipal elections held in the State of Maharashtra, were vulnerable to security lapses as they could be replaced, destroyed or tampered with, thereby easily manipulating the result of the elections.

If we look at practices across the world with respect to EVMs, this is what we find:

• Ireland abandoned electronic voting in 2006.
• In April 2004, California banned 14,000 EVMs while in March 2009, EVMs were declared as unconstitutional in Germany.
• In 2006, in Netherlands, a citizen group demonstrated that they could hack into EVMs without the knowledge of either the voters or the election officials, after which, the licences of 1,187 EVMs were withdrawn.

In addition, in the United States of America, it has been shown that EVMs can be easily hacked. A component, programmed to steal a percentage of the votes in favour of a chosen candidate, controlled by signals sent using a mobile phone, can be used to replace a small display component of the machine. The LED segments on which the voting results are displayed contain a 3mm gap where a chip, connected wirelessly to a mobile phone, can be loaded to control what is displayed on the screen. The data stored in the EVMs between the days of elections and counting can be manipulated to transfer votes from one candidate to the other.

Hence, there is a need for an improved system as well as method that is resistant to tampering to curtail fake and multiple voting.