[New post] e-Voting for “Popular Choice” for best Durga Puja using Blockchain
Debashis Sen posted: " Leveraging Blockchain for e-voting of best Durga Puja in New Town Background The Durga Puja celebrations are undertaken at New Town Kolkata with full vigour and enthusiasm every year. More than 80 Puja pandals are setup throughout New Town by vario" Urban Journal
Leveraging Blockchain for e-voting of best Durga Puja in New Town
Background
The Durga Puja celebrations are undertaken at New Town Kolkata with full vigour and enthusiasm every year. More than 80 Puja pandals are setup throughout New Town by various housing societies, RWAs and blocks. New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) extends full support to all Puja Committees in New Town to ensure efficient management of all venues for an optimized pandal-hopping experience to all citizens.
NKDA has decided to spice up the season of festivities in New Town in the spirit of friendly competition by organizing an online voting platform for citizens to vote for the 'Best Overall Puja- Popular Choice'. The Puja garnering the most number of e-votes shall be declared as winner of the 'Best Overall Puja' category in New Town and felicitated in the New Town Sharad Samman 2022.
Supporting Institutes and Knowledge Partners
NKDA has partnered with eminent institutes all over the world to design, develop and implement the Blockchain based e-voting platform for Durga Puja in New Town. The partner institutes are Indian Statistical Institute, Royal Society of United Kingdom and the University of Warwick, UK.
Eminent professors in the field of blockchain and cryptology are associated with the initiative such as Professor Feng Hao (Professor of Security Engineering, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK) and Professor Bimal Roy (Former Director of Indian Statistical Institute and currently Chairman of National Statistical Commission, India).
Professor Feng Hao has trailled the blockchain based e-voting system in 2019 in the local elections at Gateshead, UK. The initiative was supported by funding from the funding from the European Research Council and Innovate UK.
The motivation was to implement an e-voting solution that could eventually transform elections, doing away with the need for an election count. Several countries have experimented with such systems but security fears have held deployment back. Hence Blockchain was integrated with the e-voting platform to ensure security and transparency. All encrypted votes are published on the election website, where anyone will be able to look at the tally for each candidate.
Professor Feng Hao has described the blockchain based e-voting platform as below.
"Imagine a picture of London skyline. The picture is formed of millions of pixels. Each voter holds the key to one pixel, which is their vote. Every pixel is encrypted so it does not reveal any private information about the individual vote."
"However, when all pixels are combined together, a picture is revealed, showing the election tally. If an attacker attempts to tamper with pixel values, or modify the election result, it will be publicly detectable because the mathematical relations between pixels will fail to be verified."
-Professor Feng Hao
Several meetings and brainstorming sessions were organized by NKDA with the knowledge partners to ensure the design and trail run of the system as per the local conditions. NKDA provided necessary technical and knowledge support to the partner institutes such as servers, website content and layout etc.
Deficiencies in Traditional voting platforms
In traditional online and offline voting systems, the votes are tallied at the end of polling by the Tallying Authorities (TA). Voters have no way to validate that their vote was cast to the intended candidate or was tallied accurately at the end of polling by the TA. If a hacker modifies the electronic votes or tally on the server, the outcome of an election can be changed without anyone knowing it. The black-box nature of such systems is the root cause for disputes in the aftermath of an election since the result cannot convince the loser.
Owning to the above deficiencies in traditional platforms, NKDA adopted the Blockchain based e-voting solution to ensure a fair, transparent, and verifiable voting process for Durga Puja in New Town.
Blockchain based e-voting platform for Durga Puja in New Town
The blockchain based voting platform of NKDA is based on a peer-reviewed end-to-end (E2E) verifiable e-voting protocol. 'Peer reviewed' means the technology has been validated by professors, researchers, and scientists from reputed institutes all around the world. 'E2E verifiable' refers to the ability of the users i.e. NKDA and citizens to verify all aspects of the voting process such as vote casting, recording and tallying.
The Unique Selling Point of the blockchain based e-voting platform is that the TA is totally removed ensuring an automated election management process. Any citizen is allowed to publicly verify the tallying integrity of the voting process.
Management of personal data submitted for e-voting
No personal data is stored. To pass authentication, the voter needs to provide a valid mobile number and enter a one-time code sent to that phone number. However, no phone numbers are stored in the system. The system only stores a one-way transformation of the mobile number to check if the same number has been used before (to prevent double voting).
Click 'I hereby agree to follow all applicable T&C'
Click on 'Sign In'
Register for voting: Verify mobile number through OTP
Enter OTP received on SMS
Click on 'Sign in'
Vote for preferred candidate: Housing or Block
Fill Optional Survey on User experience of the voting process
For viewing the results of voting: The Tally
Click on Tally
Choose the Election > 'New Town Sharad Samman 2022 – Best Overall (e-voting)'
Choose the Question from the dropdown > Best Puja under citizen choice block or housing
View Results
Any voter can verify the election tally independently. NKDA by adopting the blockchain based e-voting platform for 'Best Overall Puja- Popular Choice' has encouraged citizens to cast their vote in overwhelming numbers as the election process and result tally are automated and publicly verifiable in a fair and transparent manner.
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Times of India 1 Oct 2022t2 dt 1 Oct 2022Times of India 1 Oct 2022Times of India 1 Oct 2022
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