Context: Recently, Election Commission has planned to start mapping the population of migrant workers across the country to prepare a roadmap for the introduction of remote voting.
What is Remote Voting?

• Remote voting refers to a mechanism that allows electors to vote from locations other than polling stations assigned to their registered constituencies.
• Need: There are lakhs of voters who are unable to exercise their voting rights on account of geographical barriers due to different reasons, remote voting aims to bridge that gap. This will make the electoral process more inclusive.
• Election Commission(EC) has been working with IIT-Madras on using Blockchain technology for remote voting.

How will remote voting work?

• There will be a voting machine which has no linkage with the Internet. It will mostly be an EVM.
• EC would then find areas with around 1000-1500 remote voters and will make arrangements and set up a booth.
• At the Booth, EC is trying to develop and deploy a machine that has an electronic display which will show the ballot paper of the voter’s constituency once they press a number on the screen.
• After voting, the machines can be sealed and depending on the states, EC can fly them for counting to one location.

What is the key challenge to remote voting?

The key challenge would be to

• a) make political parties agree to it and
• b) public acceptability in a country where an EVM machine is questioned till today despite the availability of the VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail .