CDAC is planning to work on EVMs to let you cast your vote from anywhere in India

One of the issues with voting in the current scheme of things is that you need to be present in your constituency to vote. A lot of us have shifted cities or towns for work or studies and are not necessarily present at home during voting season. In such cases the vote goes to waste. But the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) is working on a solution whereby an electronic voting machine (EVM) can let a voter cast his or her vote from anywhere in the country , at the nearest poll booth.

According to a report in The Economic Times, outgoing director general Rajat Moona said that CDAC has submitted a proposal to the ministry, although the work hasn’t yet started and talks are still to be held with the Election Commission whose approval will be required to go ahead with the project.

According to Moona, a person can go to the nearest polling booth and tell the presiding officer his state, district and constituency where they want to cast your vote from. Of course, there will be verification of the voter as well. Work is still going on regarding how this will be implemented.

“The presiding officer will key in the information into the EVMs which may show the list of candidates and party symbols in the constituency registered in the voter’s name and he can cast his vote,” said Moona.

Moona also dismissed any allegations of tampering of the EVM saying that there is no antenna on the EVM to send or receive messages, hence no scope for tampering. Another precautionary measure is the presence of a voter-verified slip along with the candidate a voter has voted for. So there is a way for manually verifying the vote counts as well.

CDAC has also generated an e-ballot system which lets voters such as defence personnel to download the postal ballot and cast their vote and send it to a returning officer via post.