Remote Electronic Voting Machine

31/12/2022

Remote Electronic Voting Machine

A prototype for the Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM) has been developed by the election Commission of India (ECI). The aim of the Election Commission of India is facilitating voting for domestic migrants across India. The ECI has also called for political parties for a demonstration of the machines on 16 January.

The ECI also stated that if the prototype satisfies the stakeholders, domestic migrant workers will not have to travel to their hometown to register their votes.

Election Commission (EC) informed that Remote Electronic Voting Machine will be developed as “a robust, fail-proof and efficient stand-alone system” based on existing electronic voting machines and will not be connected to the internet.

Advantages of RVM:

The Election Commission of India is setting about this major move to increase voter participation.

The ECI is doing this major task after focusing on youth and urban apathy as remote voting will be a transformational initiative for strengthening participation in electoral democracy.

Many a times migrants are loath to get themselves enrolled at their place of work for various reasons such as frequently changing residences, not enough social and emotional connect with the issues of area of migration, unwillingness to get their name deleted in an electoral roll of their home or native constituencies as they have permanent residence or property.

Even if there is no central database available for migration within the country, the analysis of available data in the public domain points to work, marriage and education-related migration as important components of domestic migration.

The specified “Out-migration” is predominant among the rural population in overall domestic migration and around 85% of the internal migration is within states.

The multi-constituency remote EVM which is developed by a public sector undertaking, is able to handle up to 72 constituencies from a single remote polling booth.

The commission has also courted written views of recognized political parties by January 31 on various related issues, including changes required in legislation, changes in administrative procedures and voting method for domestic migrants.