Here's how the Election Commission can ensure 100% accuracy in urban India's voter lists

On Monday, both Tamil Nadu and Kerala – with about 5.8 crore and 2.6 crore voters respectively – voted for their next government.

However, are these voter numbers, on which turnouts are also based, really accurate? If not, what are the kinds of errors that exist on voter lists, and how can we fix them? These are some questions that have not found due attention in the discourse around elections – they are drowned out in the noise generated by issues around campaign finance, criminalisation of candidates, mandatory disclosures and the usual hue and cry of overall campaigning.

Errors on the voter list range from the presence of citizens who are dead, or have moved out of their listed addresses, to the omission of citizens eligible to vote.

Voter list accuracy

High citizen mobility clubbed with inefficient voter list management processes is what leads to these errors. At the rate India is urbanising, over 800 million citizens will be residing in our cities and towns by 2050. This demographic shift also means increased citizen mobility.

Thus, it is high time we delved into questions on voter list accuracy more seriously. At stake is the constitutional right to vote granted to each Indian above the age of 18 years.

To fix our voter lists, we need to focus on one of the most crucial aspects of the ecosystem – the Booth Level Officer or the BLO. Introduced into the voter list management machinery in 2006 after a successful experiment in West Bengal, Booth Level Officers today serve as the face and foot-soldiers of the Election Commission of India. These are government or semi-government personnel who, besides holding full-time jobs, are also responsible for maintaining their area’s voter lists.

They are the single point of on-ground verification for the Election Commission. In an urban centre, each Booth Level Officer services an area, called a polling part, of roughly 1,200 voters, or 300-400 households. The BLO system has been by and large successful as lists have got progressively cleaner since their introduction.

However, just like any other system, this also needs periodic upgradation and revision. Evidence from the cities of Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram suggests flawed implementation of this model and a need to strengthen some of the processes within it. A recent study conducted by Janaagraha suggests that in both cities, close to half of all BLOs reside and work outside their allotted polling parts. Some have to travel up to an hour to reach the citizens they service. This means that it is not easy for them to cater to the needs of the citizens in their allocated areas efficiently. This is in violation of the Election Commission guidelines, which mandate that BLOs have to be appointed from the eligible ones residing in that particular polling part.

To ensure that the voter list remains clean, BLOs are required to conduct statistical analyses such as comparing their polling part’s gender ratio to their district’s census data. However, more than half of BLOs in Thiruvananthapuram are aanganwadi workers and may not possess the skills to conduct such analyses.

Information on the designation of BLOs was not available for Chennai but the state of affairs its likely to be similar there. In Chennai, even the availability of a BLO’s contact information online is in question. Out of a total of 3,699 polling parts in Chennai, only 44% had their BLO’s numbers available online. When trying to contact a sample, out of 357 attempts, only 19 correct BLOs ­– those who were BLOs of the area that the website said they were in charge of – could be reached.

Adding to the list of issues is the fact that though BLOs are supposed to be performing their duties in addition to other full-time jobs throughout the year, the bulk of work happens in just a few months before elections or during summary revisions. This puts immense pressure on BLOs and affects their efficiency. All these issues lead to errors on voters’ lists and need to be fixed if India is to really provide universal franchise.

Fixing the loopholes

To improve this system, we need to start work on addressing two broad areas. The first is to review BLO workflows and make them more efficient. This can be done by infusing technology to create smart technology driven workflows. This includes the use of hand-held devices to service citizens on the spot, mapping polling part boundaries and geo-tagging households in that area to ensure no eligible citizen is missed out.

The second area to address is optimisation of BLO work – to remove any responsibility from them that can be better performed elsewhere. Using hand-held devices, again, will allow real-time data to flow from the BLO to the higher layers within the voter list management machinery. Any analysis, such as the statistical comparison of gender ratio data can then be performed by the Electoral Roll Officers, who are the custodians of the list, and can then be used for more efficient and targeted BLO interventions.

A key technology driven reform – which will not just help optimise BLO work and style of functioning but will greatly reduce any dependency we have on this system – is Automatic Voter Registration. This concept has found a lot of traction in developed nations, and in the US – a democracy which still relies mostly on a pen-and-paper system of voter list management such as ours – has even found place in presidential debates. Automatic voter registration means registering any citizen, who turns 18, to the list automatically using database linkages such as with birth records. Additionally, we need to explore database linkages that allow the Election Commission to track citizen movement and account for it effectively on the voters’ lists.

India is the Information Technology backbone of the world. Barring the usual issues, we have managed to enrol over a billion people on the Aadhaar platform. This suggests that the use of technology to strengthen the BLO system, and therefore the overall voter list management system, is a possibility to be explored in all seriousness.

And while the Election Commission has shown good leadership through initiatives such as the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication, where voter IDs were linked with Aadhaar, a lot more needs to be done. The time is ripe for the Election Commission to crown the good work it has been doing with a technology revolution that will ensure 100% accurate voter lists.

Vivek Anandan Nair is Senior Research Associate at Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy.