“Postal ballot” extended to certain people in Tamil Nadu

“Postal ballot” extended to certain people in Tamil Nadu

Postal voting for electors aged above 80 is under way in various Assembly constituencies of Tamil Nadu. For the first time in India, the Election Commission of India has allowed the casting of postal votes for a certain section of Peoples.

About the Postal Ballot System

Postal Ballot System is voting type in an election where ballot papers are distributed to electors by post, in contrast to electors voting in person at a polling station or electronically via an electronic voting system.

The postal ballot paper to the service voters was sent by the Returning Officer after printing the ballot for each and every service voter of the Constituency, and then put it in an envelope inscribed with the address of the Record Office of each service voters.

This takes a lot of resources, efforts and time, thus increasing the chance of mistake, since each ballots need to be printed and put in the correct envelope.

Since, the last part of electoral roll was not upto date, therefore, the Record Officer faced a challenge in identifying the present place of posting of the service voter thus failing in delivering the postal ballot to the concerned service voters in time.

Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System

Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System (ETPBS) is the one-way electronic transmission of the Postal ballots to the Service Voters.

The Service Voter then cast their vote and send it to the respective returning officer via Post. The complete process is secured by way of multiple checks and transmission protocol to ensure safe transmission.

Returning Officer generates ballot paper electronically by a specific desktop application. The list of the candidates is punched along with their party names. This ballot then gets encrypted in the system is ready to be sent.

Through ETPBS system, the ballots are automatically assigned to Service Voters based upon their constituency and get then gets transmitted. The unit officer downloads the Postal ballots on behalf of the service voter. These downloaded ballots will be password protected.

Thus ETPBS transmits the Postal ballot from the returning officer to the service voters electronically by a series of security protocol.