THE ELECTION Commission on Tuesday said it would streamline its internal processes for collecting voter turnout data from polling booths, making the public disclosure of the trends faster, starting with the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections.
“This new process significantly reduces the time lag associated with the earlier manual reporting methods. The initiative aligns with the Commission’s commitment to ensure timely public communication, which has often been underlined by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on various occasions,” the EC said in a statement.
So far, the voter turnout data was collected manually, via phone calls and messages, from presiding officers of polling stations to sector officers and returning officers. “This information was aggregated every two hours and uploaded to the Voter Turnout App. The polling percentage trends were often updated hours later, based on physical records arriving late in the night or even the next day, leading to delays of 4-5 hours or more…” the EC said.
The new process would entail presiding officers uploading the data directly onto the EC’s new ECINET app every two hours. Data would be automatically aggregated at the constituency level and updated for the public on the app. “Notably, voter turnout data will now be entered into ECINET by PROs immediately after the close of poll, before they leave the polling station, which will reduce the delays… Where mobile networks are unavailable, entries can be made offline and synced once connectivity is restored,” the EC said.
During last year’s Lok Sabha elections, Opposition parties had questioned the EC over the delay in releasing final voter turnout figures at the end of polling.
