Election Commission Introduces Home Voting

• Election Commission of India to introduce home voting in 2024 election
• Aim to ensure no voter is left behind
• Home Voting Facility:
  
  • Allows voting from home with full polling staff and security personnel
  • Secrecy of voting maintained
  • Beneficiaries: Persons with disabilities (PwDs) meeting 40% benchmark disability, senior citizens above 85 years
• Other Inclusive Voting Steps:
  
  • Abolishing Form-M for Kashmiri migrants in Jammu and Udhampur
  • SVEEP to engage PwDs and educate friends, families, polling officials
  • Proposed Multi-Constituency Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM) for migrant voters
  • Postal ballot for special voters, service voters, voters on election duty, and electors in preventive detention
  • Proxy voting for service voters to delegate voting rights to a representative

Service voters include:

• Service voters are individuals who are eligible to vote despite being away from their usual place of residence due to their service commitments.
• This category includes members of the armed forces, police forces serving outside their state, government employees posted outside India, and members of forces governed by the Army Act, 1950.
• Service voters are provided with special provisions to ensure they can exercise their right to vote, such as postal ballots and electronic voting options.