SMS based Voter Turnoutimplemented during the

Lok Sabha Elections -2009in

02- South Goa Parliamentary Constituency

No. of Assembly Segments: 20No. of Polling Stations: 660No. of critical Polling Stations: 29No. of vulnerable Polling Stations: 84No. of untoward incidents registered: NilNo. of major incidents registered: Nil

02- South Goa Parliamentary Constituency

SMS - Modus operandi

1. BLO’s shall sent SMS to the SMS Gateway No. after every Time Slot of 9, 11, 13, 15 & 17 Hours.

Format of SMS

AC No (space) PS NO (space) Male Voters (space) Female Voters (space) Total Voters (space) Time Slot

Eg.

23 11 45 39 84 9

2. At the Gateway Application SMS Slot for 9 Hrs. will be open exactly at 9 Hrs. and starts receives the SMS and the SMS will be converted to data and directly stored in the database for further compilation.

SMS - Modus operandi Contd.

2. All correct SMS will be acknowledged back to the sender by the SMS Gateway Appln. using another SMS Modem.

Any incorrect SMS, is not as per the format, shall be sent with the specific error message to the sender asking for correct SMS.

3. The subsequent time slot SMS any if received before shall be accepted with acknowledge SMS to the sender. But the same shall be converted into database after the time slot opened.

NOTE:

Two modems were used one to receive SMS and second to send SMS.

SMS are accepted from the BLO’s No. only, SMS No are verified against the recorded BLO No. in the Gateway appln. Any SMS received from third party is ignored.

Training & Software Development

NIC, Goa Unit has developed the Software (SMS Gateway application) and imparted the training to all BLOs.

90% BLOs have there own mobile sets.

10% BLOs provided with the rented mobile sets

Three trail runs were conducted from the Polling stations before the poll day.

Hardware / Software

• GSM Samba USB Modem – 2 Nos

• Pentium based client PC

• Software platform– Client Appln. using Visual Basic.– SQL Server– Segate Crystal reports for MIS reports.

Expenditure

An amount of about Rs. 70,000 has been spent.

Inclusive of Rs. 9000 per modem.

Each BLO’s also paid Rs. 75 as incentives.

SMS based Voters turn out - Results

No. of BLOs appointed: 660

No. of Mobiles used: 660

Total No. of SMS received from BLOs: 3321

Total No. of correct SMS received: 2908

% of Correct SMS received: 88%

No. of SMS sent by the DEO office: 4114

Frequency of messages sent by the BLOs

Time No. of SMS 09.00 AM 604 11.00 AM 516 01.00 PM 520 03.00 PM 420 05.00 PM 848 Total 2908Incomplete SMS 413Grand Total 3321

Frequency of SMSs

No. of SMS received on poll-day during

Morning Evening

Time No. TimeNo.

08.50-09.10356 04.55-05.20 389

09.10-09.20 69 05.30-06.00 78

09.20-09.30 51 06.00-07.00 67

09.30-10.00 94 after 07.00 41

Total for 9Hrs 570 5 Hrs 575

SMS - Shortfall86% of BLOs sent correct messages

Reset 14% of the BLOs are unable to sent due to various reasons, majority is due to shadow area of mobile signals. Few BLO are not able to compose SMS.

For such PS for shortfall of SMS, the traditional way is adopted to record voter turnout.

ConclusionThe results with SMS based voter turnout is

very impressive.

The hourly voter turnout shall be compiled with accuracy and close to the actual & exact % within 20 minutes of the close of the respective time slot.

The future direction would be achieving 100% SMS based voter turnout and with additional Gateway, we can expect to get results in less than 10 minutes.