Stamp your vote with time

For long, stock market regulators have looked at trade patterns to detect market manipulations by unscrupulous traders. But, despite having lots of data, regulators of the most important democratic exercise couldn���t do much about manipulations. Reason: Unlike in a trade, there is no time stamp on your vote.

But, now, there will be voting with time stamps. Parts of Tamil Nadu, for the first time, will be voting on machines that come with an in-built timer to detect the time of polling. The Election Commission (EC) believes this will help in detecting manipulations such as booth capturing.

Ten thousand such machines have been deployed in the Tamil Nadu. The four constituencies with these new models include Madurai, Theni, Dindigul and Virudhunagar. Madurai, in particular, was in the news after allegations of bribing voters and coercing polling officers in Tirumangalam by-poll four months back. Tamil Nadu chief electoral officer Naresh Gupta, however, said the choice of constituency was based on shortage of EVMs and not sensitivity of the area.

���The BEL 2006 model has an additional feature, where the votes polled during a certain period of time can be ascertained. This is an advantage if someone has an issue with votes polled during a certain period. It can be checked through EVMs,��� Mr Gupta told ET on Tuesday.

While technology will help bring in more transparency, it will give EC more teeth to act against corrupt poll agents. Usually, instances of booth capturing tend to happen in the last few hours of polling, where hundreds of votes are cast at the same time.

���Particularly, if in the last one or two hours if there is a large percent of polling, then someone may question and seek information as to the votes polled in that period. Then, it can become an election issue, which can be raised through an election petition,��� Mr Gupta added. While EC faced a shortage of 30,000 EVMs, it procured 20,000 from a few states and 10,000 directly from the BEL factory in Bangalore.