This is an open call for evidence to receive a wide range of inputs and perspectives on the issue of implementing blockchain-based solutions for elections in India. The inputs will form the basis for public deliberations. A report will be produced - collated from the evidence - to provide guidance on the pros and cons resulting from the use of technology in elections and associated issues of enrollment, identification and citizens’ participation in national, state and local elections.

The following activities will take place under this project:

Weekly master classes, conducted by academicians and practitioners to develop awareness about about the historicity of election systems, and why the current systems work the way they do from the point of view of access, equity and accountability.
Public deliberations around the Call for Evidence - where submissions are grouped together to review the risks and benefits of implementing blockchain (or distributed ledger) based technologies in the electoral voting systems - from sociological, technical, legal and rights’ based perspectives.
Creation of a collaborative report which lays out the pros and cons of implementing blockchain-based technologies in the electoral system.

Participation

You can participate in this project by:

Attending the weekly master classes. RSVP to join.
Suggest/connect with speakers who can teach master classes.
Spread a good word about the Call for Evidence.
Volunteer by contributing with skills - copy-editing, translations, organizing sessions.

Learn More

The One Vote Project has produced content around the topic of introduction of technology in elections. The list below provides links to our work.

Introduction to the project
Master class and webinar videos available here
Playlist of webinars
Technology, Trust and Elections - An Interim Report from the One Vote Project

About One Vote

One Vote is an initiative to examine a diverse set of inputs and perspectives regarding the introduction and evolution of technology as part of the elections. We use public discourse, deliberations and reports to raise awareness about this topic for a lay audience. One Vote is designed to enable creating a framework - a mental model by which aspects of responsible technology can be reviewed in terms of fairness, transparency, equity, inclusion and privacy among other rights.

This project started as part of Kaarana and is now a collective in its own right.

Find more about Kaarana at medium.com/karana and Twitter https://twitter.com/kaarana_

Contact details: If you have a question, post a comment. You can also post questions and join conversations in Kaarana’s Telegram group https://t.me/kaarana

Featured submissions

See all

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay

Srikanth Lakshmanan

SK

Srinivas Kodali

What really happened? Discussing the mock election conducted by TSEC

Following up on our first remarks on the e-voting announcement from the Telangana State Election Commission we present a discussion around the mock election which was recently conducted. more

21 Oct 2021
SB

Subhashis Banerjee

On nuances of electronic voting

We will discuss various considerations for electronic voting and digital electoral rolls and their compliance with democracy principles. We will broadly cover some aspects of the recent reports of the Ctizens’ Commission on Elections (https://www.reclaimtherepublic.co/report) - mainly Volume I, but also some aspects from Volume II related to electoral rolls - and the references therein. In partic… more

09 May 2021
TS

Tarangini Sriraman

Prints in the Sand of Time: The Construction of Uniqueness before Biometric Authentication

What is the story of constructing uniqueness in India prior to the arrival of biometric authentication, with all its hybrid predicates such as digital fingerprinting, iris, voice and facial recognition? Can this history be narrated merely by tracing sporadic moments spurred by new research and administrative interest in fingerprinting and anthropometry? Alongside these advances, it is critical th… more

17 May 2021
KG

Kannan Gopinathan

Field Notes from Elections

What are the roles and processes in an Election? How is security maintained? What are the current set of issues which need to be considered to maintain the integrity of the electoral democracy? In the session we’ll discuss about these and other topics which have been the strength of the electoral process and how to examine any change in context of the citizen’s view of the elections. more

13 May 2021
SB

Subhashis Banerjee

Publicly verifiable voting: a design sketch illustration

We will study the design sketch of a publicly verifiable and strongly software independent voting system as an illustrative example to better understand the issues involved in deploying such systems in large public elections (beyond academic computer science). We will discuss the pros and cons. more

13 May 2021