Tag: voting

IIT Madras Moves Student Election Voting to Blockchain, Identifies Challenges

In a bid to test the use of blockchain in the governance sector, IIT Madras has moved its student election systems from servers to blockchain. As part of a college club dedicated to blockchain-related research work, students at the prestigious engineering college are attempting to test the technology along the themes of voting and IP protection, among others. In conversation with Gadgets 360, IIT Madras said that its experiments with blockchain should not be seen as ‘betting on crypto,’ rather as a pilot into exploring the distributed ledger technology on a wider scale.

Professors Prabhu Rajagopal and John Augustine from IIT Madras collaborated with the students on the project to introduce blockchain-based voting as part of their student election process.

Research and experiments at IIT Madras have shown that blockchains could improve the governance system by bringing down the costs considerably and enabling a verifiable and tamper-proof voting process.

“Blockchain offers a cost reduction to conduct and manage the overall voting process, which is otherwise not possible when conducting large-scale elections using other software based on servers. In addition, blockchain’s feature that prevents any changes to be made to the stored data brings an innate trust to the election process,” IIT Madras faculty members involved in the project told Gadgets 360. “Blockchain will be the backbone of many innovations in this decade and will radically change the functioning of various social institutions.”

Blockchain is a decentralised, distributed, time-stamped ledger used for maintaining a record of all transactions running on the network. This ledger, instead of being maintained by one person or organisation (which is the case in normal databases), is maintained by all the ‘nodes’ on the blockchain, resulting in political and power decentralisation, representing true democracy.

IIT Madras has been trying to incorporate blockchain into its internal election system since 2022. In the last two years, some of the country’s top engineering minds have identified some shortcomings associated with integrating blockchain in the voting systems.

“The transaction speed on blockchain is slower with current technologies and this has to be improved if the system has to be deployed on large scales; also, ensuring that the system is secure from cyber-attacks poses some challenges on a wider scale implementation,” Professor Prabhu Rajagopal, Advisor (Innovation and Entrepreneurship), IIT Madras, told Gadgets 360.

Rajagopal also noted that deploying the blockchain infrastructure to manage large scale databases might also come across as an eventual challenge that will need to be handled tactically.

This year, IIT-Madras has piloted a blockchain solution developed by Plenome, a startup headed by Rajagopal and consisting of blockchain-curious students.

“Voting technology is one such area which is the bedrock of a democratic system. We aim to make this process simple and accessible to people in their comfort while simultaneously improving security and reducing overall costs. Scaling up the elections will bring about new challenges which we will be eager to solve,” the institute officials noted.

The institute also recently initiated the work of drafting policies to oversee the metaverse sector in India as a reference that the government could access and utilise while deploying regulations on the national level.

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Lori Lightfoot claims she ‘misspoke’ when telling voters who don’t support her not to vote

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, D, told South Side voters they should not vote at all if they do not vote to re-elect her, but she now insists that she misspoke during the heat of the moment.

During a campaign event over the weekend in Grand Crossing, the mayor said anyone from the South Side voting for “somebody not named Lightfoot is a vote for Chuy Garcia or Paul Vallas,” referring to her challengers. 

U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas are the other frontrunners in the election for Chicago mayor.

“If you want them controlling your fate and your destiny, then stay home,” Lightfoot continued. “Then don’t vote.”

But after casting her vote Monday at Northeastern Illinois University, Lightfoot told reporters she did not mean to suggest voters should sit out the election.

“If I said anything other than everybody everywhere needs to vote, then I misspoke in the heat of a campaign rally,” she said. “But I’ve been very consistent all along saying everybody everywhere needs to step up, and they need to vote just as I said today.”


Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said if people don’t want their fate or destiny controlled — to not vote.
Getty Images

Lightfoot’s initial comments, however, drew criticism from her mayoral opponents who accused her of damaging the democratic process.

“This is disqualifying rhetoric for anyone hoping to lead a Chicago that is a multi-racial and multi-ethnic city,” Garcia said, according to FOX 32.

Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who is also running to become the next mayor of Chicago, said residents deserve “real leadership” and are ready to “turn the page” with the election of a new mayor.


Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot scaled back her “don’t vote” comment, saying that everybody everywhere needs to vote.
Getty Images

“Lori Lightfoot telling residents not to vote unless they vote for her shows that she cares more about maintaining power for herself than empowering communities or getting things done for the people of our city,” he said.

Another challenger, philanthropist Willie Wilson, said Lightfoot’s words were “delusional, divisive, dangerous and disappointing.”


Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot casts her ballot at an early voting site on Feb. 20, 2023 in Chicago.
Getty Images

Activist Ja’Mal Green, another mayoral candidate, wrote on Twitter that Lightfoot’s “desperation was showing.”

“I just showed this to a bus load of new voters & the video made them more motivated than ever to vote against Lightfoot today,” he wrote.

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Black voters in Georgia overwhelmingly reported positive voting experience under controversial law

The overwhelming majority of black voters in Georgia said they had a “good” or “excellent” voting experience under a new election reform law that President Biden decried as “Jim Crow 2.0” when it was enacted in 2021.

A post-election survey from the University of Georgia released last week found that none of the 364 black voters polled had a “poor” experience at the ballot box.

By contrast, 72.6% of the surveyed black voters said their experience was “excellent,” while 23.6% said it was “good” and 3.3% said it was “fair.” The remaining 0.5% said they didn’t know how to characterize their voting experience.

In addition, 99.4% of black voters said they felt safe while waiting to cast their ballot.

In March of 2021, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a GOP-led bill into law that imposed restrictions on voting by mail and identification requirements while increasing legislative control over elections in the state.


None of the black voters polled said they had a poor voting experience.
Getty Images

Critics said the Election Integrity Act was an attempt to further marginalize historically suppressed black voters in the state — and an overreaction to former President Donald Trump’s claims that widespread voter fraud in the usually red state led to his defeat there in the 2020 election.

“This is Jim Crow in the 21st Century. It must end,” President Biden said of the measure at the time it became law.

“Instead of celebrating the rights of all Georgians to vote or winning campaigns on the merits of their ideas, Republicans in the state instead rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote,” he said.

The passage of the bill led Major League Baseball to yank the 2021 All Star Game from Truist Park in Cobb County, Ga. as Democrats called for a boycott of the state economy.


Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed the 2021 law into effect amid Democratic opposition.
AP

The 2022 election in Georgia featured a key Senate race between two black candidates. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, beat back a challenge from University of Georgia Heisman Trophy winner and Trump-anointed GOP hopeful Herschel Walker in a Dec. 6 runoff.

In contrast to Biden’s claims, 91.6% of black voters said voting in 2022 was either easier or had the same degree of difficulty as in 2020 — with only 6.9% saying casting a ballot was easier two years earlier.

The university surveyed 1,253 voters over the phone between Nov. 13 and Dec. 6.

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Early voting in NYC anemic for Hochul until Clintons, VP Harris arrival

Turnout during the nine days of early voting in overwhelmingly Democratic New York City was light — and experts say the lack of early enthusiasm could portend trouble for incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Hochul, who was forced to call in the cavalry — Bill and Hillary Clinton and President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — in a bid to wake up slumbering New York Democrats the past week is in the political fight of her life against surging Republican challenger Lee Zeldin.

A total of 432,634 voters turned out early in the five boroughs even as both public and internal polls have showed a very tight race.

“The lack of enthusiasm for the Hochul campaign is validated by these mediocre [early voting] numbers,” said political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.

“Zeldin has a higher possibility of winning based on these numbers.”

One Democratic strategist said of the turnout, “This race is a jump ball.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks during her “Get Out The Vote” rally at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.
Ron Adar/Shutterstock

New York City’s cumulative turnout by the seventh day of early voting, Friday, stood at just 33.7% of the early turnout when compared to the presidential election in 2020.

Breaking the alarm glass seems to have worked a little — as turnout across the five boroughs picked up a bit over the weekend.

By the time early voting had ended on Sunday, the turnout had jumped five percentage points — still just 38.6% of the 2020 turnout when 1.19 million people voted early in the fiercely contested 2020 presidential election between President Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Hochul brought out President Biden to try and energize voters ahead of Election Day.
Steve Sands/NewYorkNewswire/Baue

Early turnout was dreadful in heavily Democrat The Bronx, where only 39,069 residents voted — just 3,000 more votes than cast in GOP-led Staten Island, which has just about a third of The Bronx’s population.

Brooklyn registered 135,239 votes, followed by Manhattan with 133,618, Queens with 88,840, the Bronx with 39,069 and Staten Island with 35,868.

Zeldin told The Post Monday that turnout and enthusiasm for Hochul is light in many of the city’s Democratic strongholds while he’s generating enthusiastic support.

“It’s a big issue for Hochul, I don’t know if she’s gonna be able to recover from this tomorrow. The turnout in certain areas where she was expecting a higher turnout just wasn’t there,” Zeldin said.

“Zeldin has a higher possibility of winning based on these numbers.”
AFP via Getty Images

“We’ve seen the enthusiasm gap for awhile — it’s shown themselves in different respects. While she was rallying a few days ago with Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, we had 10 times as many people showing up at a rally in the capital region. There’s clearly a big energy gap and enthusiasm gap between the two campaigns.

“She just didn’t get the numbers that she needed from some of these boroughs. There are certain groups inside of the boroughs that just didn’t show up. And we’re not seeing anything today that is lighting a fuse amongst those people who had just not shown up.”

State Conservative Party chairman Jerry Kassar said that by contrast, the early voter turnout rate was stronger in Zeldin’s base in Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties than in Democratic-leaning New York City where Hochul needs to run up the score.

But State Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs, a key Hochul adviser, insisted the turnout was good for Hochul and the Democratic ticket.

Jacobs said New York City typically accounts for about a third of the vote in statewide elections. He said it was at 27% of the early vote total and was hopeful to at least hit that mark during the final vote on Tuesday.

A total of 432,634 voters turned out early in the five boroughs.
AP

“We feel very good. We’ll see what happens when the polls close on Tuesday,” Jacobs said.

Sources said government workers and black voters historically tend to vote on Election Day, which could boost the turnout for Hochul. But many Republican-leaning voters also prefer to vote on Election Day.

Hochul and the Democratic ticket do have a big advantage when it comes to absentee ballots, a Post review of state and city election data reveals.

The state Board of Elections reported that 62% or 349,087 of the 564,318 absentee ballots requested by voters statewide were from registered Democrats. Only 20% or 111,744 were requested by Republicans and 17% or 96,288 were requested by independents.

Of the 327,886 absentee ballots returned thus far, 200,243 were from Democrats, 72,495 from Republicans and 50,604 from independents.

The overwhelming number of absentee ballots requested in New York City were from Democrats — 171,188 of 219,228.

Thus far, 83,582 of the 102,923 paper ballots received by the local elections board were from Democrats.

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Va. history repeating in NY, … and other commentary

Conservative: Va. History Repeating in NY?

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe likely lost the 2021 election with his debate declaration, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Now, argues the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon, Gov. “Hochul may have just gifted deep blue New York to her challenger” with her debate flub, when Rep. Lee Zeldin noted she “hasn’t talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes” and she replied “I don’t know why that is so important to you.” Like McAuliffe’s gaffe, Gurdon notes, it was a “crystalline statement of Democratic insouciance toward ordinary people’s interests.” So: “It can be no surprise” that the polling “trend is fast against” Hochul. If Zeldin wins, “McAuliffe can take consolation in the thought that he isn’t alone in his Olympian blundering.”

Budget watch: Hochul Hiding Red Ink

“Governor Hochul’s budget office has yet to release the statutorily required mid-year financial plan update,” huffs the Empire Center’s Peter Warren. State law requires its release by Oct. 30. Why the delay? Likely because it holds “grim news” reflecting the “economic and financial market downturn.” The Aug. 1 update “projected a sea of red ink in the coming years, with deficits exceeding $6 billion by FY 2027.” By “signing the Green CHIPS legislation” a few days later, Hochul added “another roughly $500 million per year to the outyear annual deficits.” Voters should be able “to see the full impact on the state’s finances of both broad economic and market conditions, and specific policy decisions made by elected officials.” That’s why the law requires them “by a date certain.”

From the left: Big Brother’s Watching You Vote

TKNews’ Matt Taibbi flags the rise of mailers aiming “to remind people voting records are public, and whether they vote next week will be public record.” Some are handwritten with a signature; one creeped-out recipient says, “It feels threatening, as if a neighbor is keeping track of who has or has not voted.” Indeed, Taibbi reports, “the word ‘Orwellian’ came up more than once in interviews” on “so-called social shaming mailers.” Yet the practice “is likely to increase even more in the future” because it works. “Is Big Brother watching? If the wrong party loses next week, someone in your neighborhood probably will be. Welcome to 21st century electioneering.”

Eye on elex: Dems’ Dead-Parrot Denialism

“It’s never a good idea to tell people that what they see before them isn’t real,” warns The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker, recalling the classic Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch. On key issues, “Democratic candidates across the country are performing an uncanny impersonation of the shopkeeper in the sketch who insists that the deceased bird is in fact not deceased, but ‘just resting’ and ‘pinin’ for the fjords.’ ” President Biden, for one, calls the economy “strong as hell,” yet inflation is “rapidly eroding real wages.” And Gov. Hochul’s “I don’t know why” locking up criminals is “so important to you” remark, Baker contends, shows “a detachment from the reality in which so many of her fellow New Yorkers live.”

Populist: GOP Must Learn From Musk

Elon Musk’s top challenge at Twitter “is changing the culture of this large organization without interrupting its business,” Bruce Abramson explains at RealClearPolitics, and “it’s a task at which President Trump failed. Trump often complained about the politicization and corruption of federal agencies . . . but he had zero perceptible impact on the culture of the federal bureaucracy.” Learn from Musk’s “first moves. He immediately removed key members of Twitter’s leadership, including its CEO, CFO, policy head, and general counsel,” axing “the highest profile senior people most identified with Twitter’s culture.” Then he “denied the rumors that he intended to fire three out of every four employees — without providing details about his actual intentions. The combined message is exactly right: Twitter culture is about to change in a significant way. If you’re competent in your job and on board with the shift, we’d be pleased to have you stay.”

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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