The world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic for over a year now. It has led to a dramatic loss of human lives and the economic system worldwide has collapsed. It also has been presenting an unprecedented challenge to the public healthcare system. Thus, it has forced the world to come up with various measures to continue with their daily lives, such as online classes, online examinations and work from home.  

But even in this situation, India has witnessed various state and corporation elections. In the Indian voting system, polling is generally held between 7:00 am and 6:00 pm. The Collector of each district is in charge of polling. Government employees are employed as poll officers at the polling stations.  Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) are being used nowadays instead of ballot boxes to prevent election fraud. After the citizen votes, his or her left index finger is marked with indelible ink. Many of us might have wondered what would have been the scenario if there was an online voting system for people who are accustomed to technology to minimize gathering. The Times of India came up with a similar view. During the run-up to the last general elections in 2019, The Times of India pioneered the lost votes initiative for people who were unable to reach their registered voting addresses. The Lost Votes Tech Solutions Challenge was arranged by TOI that focused primarily on finding alternative means so that maximum votes can be garnered. Participation was allowed in groups of a maximum of four members. 

Two students from the 2nd year ECE department of our college – Priyadrashan Ghosh and Rajarshi Dutta along with their friends from LPU- Arnab Ray and Rohit Roy participated in this hackathon. The brief of the problem statement was- ‘All adults have a right to vote, but this right is not being exercised due to the limitation of voting in the registered constituency by being physically there. This hackathon gives all participants an opportunity to correct this and find alternate means so that maximum votes are garnered and no one feels left out due to not being physically present in his/her constituency during the election time. Your logical ideas and prototypes are welcome to bring a change in the current voting process. Teams had to submit their ideas before the deadline to be eligible for the shortlist stage. The top 10 teams were selected for the next stage based on the evaluation criteria, and they were provided with mentors to shape their solution. In the final stage, all the 10 teams had to present their idea in front of the jury. 

The hackathon was launched on 4th October ’20 and ended on 13th November ‘20 and the results were out by January ‘21. Amidst 2500 plus registrations, our fellow college mates have also secured the fourth position. Their simple yet secured voting idea with government document authentication and unique voting codes for each voter earned a lot of praise. As they proposed the usage of a blockchain network for storing data, the risk of tampering with proof and vote influencing were also less. Above all, this solution is cost-efficient as most of the modules are already present in a discrete manner, and they just need to be assembled together. 

Thus, it can be concluded that this idea may be used to create an effective general online voting system if executed properly. 

For detailed information about their solution, follow this link 

https://github.com/Priyadarshan2000/TOI-LOST-VOTE