Mumbaikars, do you know where to vote? A startup is here to help.
The Election Commission of India is trying hard to encourage citizens to vote. It has roped in several celebrities to campaign for the cause. But the stats aren’t very satisfying. The reasons for these are complex and varied, but solutions are urgently needed to resolve this problem.
For starters, the majority of voters are not aware of the polling booth where they need to go to cast their vote. It's especially a big problem in metros where people are not aware of the more remote locales. for example, most polling booths are set up at local Government schools and most citizens are not at all.
If you go on the Election Commission website, you will take much more than ten steps to locate your booth. All these campaigns urging people to go and vote will not amount to anything unless voters aren’t aware of the polling booth they are suppose to go. In smaller towns, volunteers from various political parties go door to door helping people find their polling booth; this measure is absolutely absent in metros. With 814 million electoral populations, there’s a huge potential for startups operating in the political sphere to engage in, get their product validated and create an impact.
Thousands of candidates have filed their nominations across 543 constituencies and the fate of 232 constituencies (voting has taken place in 232 constituencies so far) has already been sealed in the five phases of voting which were completed recently. the 2014 polls is witnessing more social media buzz than ever and heightened discussions on Facebook and Twitter.
To help voters know the location of their polling booth, Amar Tumballi and Basavana Gowda have launched this initiative – where-do-I-vote.in.
It's a simple search engine where you can search for the polling booth location based on your name or your voter ID card number. They launched this website just 2 days before Bangalore voting day. Today they announced the availability of this service for more than 1.2 crore Mumbaikars and would be soon launching the same for Hyderabad in the recent future.
This is a good example of how startups can make use of public data to enable citizens to make the right decisions.
Do read their detail story next week to know more about the team and their experience.
Mumbai, Go out and cast your vote – where-do-I-vote.in