Examine the role of technology in elections

Call for evidence about risks and benefits of introducing blockchain in India's electoral systems

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:

  1. Attending the weekly master classes. RSVP to join.
  2. Suggest/connect with speakers who can teach master classes.
  3. Spread a good word about the Call for Evidence.
  4. 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.

  1. Introduction to the project
  2. Master class and webinar videos available here
  3. Playlist of webinars
  4. 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

Hosted by

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 cr… more

Supported by

Deep dives into privacy and security, and understanding needs of the Indian tech ecosystem through guides, research, collaboration, events and conferences. Sponsors: Privacy Mode’s programmes are sponsored by: more
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay

@sankarshan

CHANTAL JANINE D'COSTA

CHANTAL JANINE D'COSTA

@chants

Neeta Subbaiah

@neetasubbaiah

Additional reading material for project

Submitted May 18, 2021

List of reading materials (including links) relevant to the project

  • Estonian Internet voting with anonymous credentials İSA SERTKAYA, PETER ROENNE, PETER Y. A. RYAN (link)
  • Blockchain-Based Secured Voting Using Multi-Level Authentication
    Megala G. (Vellore Institute of Technology, India), Prabu Sevugan (Pondicherry University, India) and Venkatesan R. (SRM TRP Engineering College, India) (link)
  • J. V. Cadiz, N. A. M. Mariscal and A. M. Ceniza-Canillo, “An Empirical Analysis Of Using Blockchain Technology In E-Voting Systems,” 2021 1st International Conference in Information and Computing Research (iCORE), 2021, pp. 78-83, doi: 10.1109/iCORE54267.2021.00033.
  • M. Kaur and S. Gupta, “Blockchain Consensus Protocols: State-of-the-art and Future Directions,” 2021 International Conference on Technological Advancements and Innovations (ICTAI), 2021, pp. 446-453, doi: 10.1109/ICTAI53825.2021.9673260.
  • Ch Anwar ul Hassan, Muhammad Hammad, Jawaid Iqbal, Saddam Hussain, Syed Sajid Ullah, Hussain AlSalman, Mogeeb A. A. Mosleh, Muhammad Arif, “A Liquid Democracy Enabled Blockchain-Based Electronic Voting System”, Scientific Programming, vol. 2022, Article ID 1383007, 10 pages, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/1383007
  • Ihaab Syed, Michelle Bishop, Sarah Brannon, Erika Hudson, and Kristen Lee.Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy (link)
  • Olajumoke Ayandele, Billy Agwanda, Mark Opoku Amankwa, Gershon Dagba & Israel Nyaburi Nyadera (2021) Democracy and Elections amid the COVID 19 Pandemic: The Case of Burundi, African Security, DOI: 10.1080/19392206.2021.2009655 (link)
  • Voting Reform in Mexico (link)
  • Warshofsky, Mia, “The Elderly Voter as Collateral Damage: The Consequences of Voter Restriction on Elderly American Voter Turnout” (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-. 942. (link)
  • Seifert, A., Charness, N. Digital transformation of everyday lives of older Swiss adults: use of and attitudes toward current and future digital services. Eur J Ageing (2022). (link)
  • Breaking and Fixing Vote Privacy of the Estonian E-Voting Protocol IVXV : Johannes Mueller (link)
  • Loss aversion for the value of voting rights: WTA/WTP ratios for a ballot : Hiroharu Saito (link)
  • Does the Introduction of Online Voting Create Diversity in Representation? : Michael J Wigginton, Daniel Stockemer (link)
  • Not Unique, not Universal: Risk Perception and Acceptance of Online Voting Technology by Russian Citizens : Babayan V., Turobov A.(link)
  • Going from Bad to Worse: From Internet Voting to Blockchain Voting (PDF)
  • New MIT Paper Roundly Rejects Blockchain Voting as Solution to Election Woes (link) (accessed on 20 May 2021)
  • TECHNOLOGY: HOW CAN WE REBUILD TRUST IN VOTING? (link) (accessed on 20 May 2021)
  • TECHNOLOGY: ELECTRONIC VOTING IS NO SILVER BULLET link (accessed on 20 May 2021)
  • Securing the Vote - Protecting American Democracy (2018) (link)
  • Report from the Citizens’s Commission on Elections (Volume II) (link)
  • On balloting methods and tallying methods (link)
  • https://csc.bfu.bg/index.php/CSC/article/download/16/35/ (link)
  • Internet voting in Russia (link)
  • ELECTION INTEGRITY AND TECHNOLOGY:VULNERABILITIES AND SOLUTIONS (link) (accessed on 24 May 2021)
  • Blockchain voting is overrated among uninformed people but underrated among informed people (link)(accessed on 26 May 2021)
  • The Future of Voting Technology (link) (accessed on 27 May 2021)
  • End-to-End Verifiable Elections (link) (accessed on 27 May 2021)
  • S. V., A. Sarkar, A. Paul and S. Mishra, “Block Chain Based Cloud Computing Model on EVM Transactions for Secure Voting,” 2019 3rd International Conference on Computing Methodologies and Communication (ICCMC), 2019, pp. 1075-1079, doi: 10.1109/ICCMC.2019.8819649. (accessed on 29 May 2021)
  • https://www.ecp.gov.pk/ivoting/IVTF Report Executive Version 1.5 Final.pdf (accessed on 31 May 2021)
  • Microsoft Teams Up With Voting Machine Maker to Let Voters Track Ballots (link) (accessed on 07 Jun 2021)
  • IVTF Report, ECP (link) (accessed on 17 June 2021)
  • Pakistan’s Internet Voting Experiment, E-Vote ID 2019 Preprint (link)
  • Fourth International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting E-Vote-ID 2019 : 1-4 October 2019, Lochau/Bregenz, Austria : Proceedings (link)
  • Blockchain vs public bulletin board for integrity of elections and electoral rolls: a review (link)
  • An Undocumented Wonder: The Making of the Great Indian Election by S.Y. Quraishi (link)
  • How India Became Democratic Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise by Ornit Shani (link)

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Hosted by

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 cr… more

Supported by

Deep dives into privacy and security, and understanding needs of the Indian tech ecosystem through guides, research, collaboration, events and conferences. Sponsors: Privacy Mode’s programmes are sponsored by: more