Comment by sudeepj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sudeepj | Hacker News Reader

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With all her flaws, India's elections and its election commission does a stellar job.

Just look at the stats for 2019 elections [1] (copying few of them):

1.035 million: The total number of polling booths across India.

2: The maximum distance in kilometres from any given voter’s house to he nearest polling booth

3.96 million: Number of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in use this election

1.7 million: Paper trail or voter-verifiable paper audit trail machines. It is a documentary record of the voter having exercised his franchise

11 million: Election personnel being deployed to conduct polls

15,256: Height of the world’s highest polling station, in Tashigang, Himachal Pradesh, in feet

35: Kilometres an election team travels just so the only resident of the remote Gir National Forest in Gujarat, where Asiatic lions outnumber humans, can vote. The temple priest gets his own polling station, complete with an EVM

[1] https://qz.com/india/1591214/indian-election-2019s-voters-po...

2 km to the nearest pooling booth from every house hold? That doesn't seem to make sense.

Why this does not make sense? Can you elaborate?

It seems to good to be true?

I can see why that can be hard to believe.

See the report from Reuters[1]

Also there is a book written [2] "An Undocumented Wonder : The Making of the Great Indian Election"

https://graphics.reuters.com/INDIA-ELECTION-STATIONS/010092F...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22119020-an-undocumented...

With over one million polling booths it was about 3 booths per a square kilometer.

Here's a 2019 report from the Boston Globe about the extreme lengths that poll workers will go to in India to ensure access:

https://www.bostonglobe.com./news/world/2019/04/13/poll-work...

"The polling booth in Gir Forest National Park in Gujarat is set up for the sole human inhabitant, a Hindu priest who lives among the lions. Polling officials hike for a whole day to reach the remote village of Malogam in Arunachal Pradesh, where just one woman is registered to vote."

"Another Ladakh station, Anlay Pho, is so high at 4,500 meters (almost 15,000 feet) above sea level that polling teams must carry oxygen tanks."

"The voting machines were protected inside waterproof boxes and other polling material was kept dry under layers of plastic cover. The journey ended with a splash: Priyadarshini and the team clambered out and waded through waist-high water to reach the shore. All this for just nine voters."

"Many polling booths in remote areas have no mobile connectivity. Here too, the team had to use wireless sets and satellite phones to send the commission’s mandated twice hourly reports on the progress of polling."

Such a strong commitment to democracy, even through all the other messes in India, is beyond heartening. Such efforts should be emulated throughout the world.

EVMs have always had vulnerabilities and should not be trusted. They are forbidden in Germany.

https://indiaevm.org/

The comment was not about the EVM but the sheer personel & logistics deployed to make voting as convenient as possible. Remember India is not a rich country like US, so think in that context as well.

India was doing same scale pre evm as well. Logistics has not simplified all that much because of evms.

There are voting booths for literally for one person.

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