Homo Digitalis 09 | Aadhaar and Voter Rolls, Voluntary Code of Ethics and Use of WhatsApp in electioneering in India

Hello,

This is the ninth issue of this newsletter. I haven’t shared my recent writing on tech and elections in India here. In this issue, I focus on some of the key technology and regulatory issues that have impacted the ongoing general elections in India.

Aadhaar and Voter Rolls

In early 2023, the Election Commission of India (ECI) stated, in response to a Right to Information query, that almost 60% of the voters had linked their Aadhaar Numbers to their voter IDs. The linking of Aadhaar Numbers to other forms of identification numbers has been a project of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) since the inception of the Aadhaar program. For voter IDs, election authorities have distributed Form 6B to gather Aadhaar numbers from enrolled voters. The government introduced the form following the passage of the Election Laws (Amendment) Act in 2021. Although the ECI has said that linking with Aadhaar is voluntary, the form asks voters to affirm their lack of an Aadhaar Number if they choose not to provide it.

Linking Aadhaar Numbers with voter IDs has been a matter of contention for some years. During the state assembly elections in 2018 in Telangana, it emerged that the government may have disenfranchised over 30 lakhs voters during the process of removing frauds and duplicates from the electoral rolls by reconciling the data against Aadhaar data. In several other states, similar “cleaning up” exercises also occurred. In 2019, Srinivas Kodali, a security researcher, filed a petition in the Hyderabad High Court challenging the constitutionality of these exercises and seeking details about the process.

While there may be a legitimate need to remove duplicates from electoral rolls, using automated technology without adequate processes for those unjustly impacted by it to challenge and correct errors sets a dangerous precedent. In this case, there is blind reliance on the robustness of an “infallible” technology without accounting for the many ways it could undermine the public's rights to participate in the electoral process.

To accelerate these “cleaning up” efforts, the government allegedly launched a pilot project in Hyderabad that leveraged data from multiple databases, including Aadhaar and EPIC. The process involved seeding or algorithmically using Aadhaar Numbers and related demographic information to search for corresponding entries in other databases such as, in this case, the electoral roll’s database. In his petition to the Hyderabad High Court, Srinivas Kodali said that he suspected that if there were any differences in demographic data between the EPIC database and the Aadhaar database, the program might delete the entries from the EPIC databases.

The matter is now pending before a bench of the Supreme Court. I was able to access the affidavits filed in the court and supporting materials. According to information contained in those documents, the State Election Commission sought the use of a facility called DSDV (Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector Routing) from the UIDAI. This tool would allow them to carry out the “purification” of electoral databases by comparing them against the Aadhaar demographic data.

This exercise was based on the assumption that the Aadhaar database, due to its robust process of de-duplication using fingerprint authentication, was the most accurate and reliable one. Very early in the days after the inception of the Aadhaar project, the government assumed that this database would serve as the authoritative determinant of identification and, over time, would be used to rid other databases of duplicates. Other databases often have ghosts and duplicates and suffer from poor data collection practices. However, this process of deleting entries from other databases assumes that all entries that do not match the Aadhaar data are false and mala fide. This is clearly not the case.

Often, government databases suffer from poor data collection practices. It is not uncommon for the EPIC database to have misspelled demographic details such as name, address, and father’s name. My own name is spelled incorrectly on my EPIC card. Still, I was permitted to vote in the last two general elections after the voting officer verified my identity against my photograph and other demographic details. To attribute 'mala fide' intent to all mistakes in such databases and summarily deleting them is grossly negligent and damages the hard-earned trust in the electoral process in India.

Aside from automated deletion, the process of deleting voters from the electoral rolls is also prone to errors, and from all accounts, it is very easy to manipulate. In the case of Andhra Pradesh, investigations revealed that Telugu Desam Party party workers would use the SevaMitra app to profile voters and determine how likely they were to support the party. To do this, they would apparently use automated voice calling services to reach out to potential voters and, based on their responses, assign them a score that corresponded to their likelihood of voting for the party.

Once they had compiled a list of those with a low score and consequently, in their estimation, unlikely to vote for the party, they would file a Form 7 objection against them. Form 7 is a feature provided by the Election Commission. Anyone can file this form to object to a name in the electoral rolls. Once filed, the Election Commission is supposed to verify whether the person has moved, is deceased, or is a duplicate, and if that is the case, remove the name. It is unclear how rigorously the Commission followed these steps, as there was no proper door-to-door verification of voters whose names were deleted.

In 2023, G Niranjan, a Congress leader from Telangana, filed a petition before the Supreme Court, requesting directives to the ECI and the government for amendments allowing individuals the choice not to link their Aadhaar and Voter ID. A notification by the India Law Ministry on June 17, 2022, mandated that individuals listed on the electoral roll “may intimate” their Aadhaar number. However, the aforementioned Form 6B offered only two options: either provide the Aadhaar number or declare that one did not have one, thus compelling those unwilling to provide their Aadhaar number to make a false statement.

In September 2023, the ECI assured the court of making necessary clarifications and adjustments. Subsequently, it sought to delete the requirement for provisioning ‘sufficient cause’ for not providing Aadhaar Numbers and requested the Government of India to amend Form 6B. The government has reportedly responded that no such amendments are required and a mere clarification from ECI is sufficient. You can read the full issue focussing on this matter at Tech Policy Press here.

Voluntary Code of Ethics

n March 2019, shortly before the general elections, the ECI invited several internet companies, including Google, Facebook, and ShareChat, to participate in the creation of a Voluntary Code of Ethics to ensure the integrity of the election process. Recognizing the increasing impact that social media was having on electoral processes, the stated purpose of the Code was “to identify measures[...] put in place to increase confidence in the electoral process.” The companies engaged in this process under the leadership of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI), which presented the Code to the ECI in March 2019. After the 2019 elections, IAMAI agreed to abide by the self-regulatory code in all future state and national elections.

A primary focus of the Code was greater transparency in paid political advertising. It brought political advertisements on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter under the Model Code of Conduct (MCC). The self-regulation allows ECI to notify platforms of violations of the Code using Section126 of the Representation of the People Act 1951. It created a direct line between ECI and the platforms, enabling the notification and speedy removal of violating content. Platforms must remove reported content within three hours during the two-day non-campaigning ‘silence period’ before polling and provide reports on their actions to IAMAI and ECI. The companies also agreed to help provide information on electoral matters, run educational campaigns to raise awareness about electoral laws and conduct platform-specific training for ECI nodal officers, who serve as liaisons between the government and ECI.

As with newspaper and radio advertisements, the Code required parties to disclose expenditure accounts for social media advertisements. Advertisers submit pre-certificates issued by the ECI and the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) for election advertisements that feature the names of political parties or candidates for the upcoming elections. The candidates were also required to submit details of their social media accounts when filing their nominations. Candidates and parties also had to declare expenditures on social media, making it part of the overall spending limit.

Neither the ECI nor the Representation of Peoples Act specifies a definition of the term “political advertising.” The various Internet platforms were largely left to determine how they would define and govern political advertising. Google, for instance, includes four kinds of users whose advertising falls under the purview of political advertising. It includes (1) political parties, (2) businesses, (3) non-profit organizations, and (4) individuals, and the criteria for classifying an advertisement as political was that it must feature a political party.

On the other hand, X, formerly known as Twitter, defined political advertising as ads purchased by a political party or candidate or advocating for a clearly identified candidate or political party. X banned political ads in 2019 after the micro-blogging site faced criticism for not curbing the spread of misinformation during elections, though this was relaxed considerably in 2023.

Although the new ECI guidelines mandate the disclosure of expenditure on social media advertisements by political parties and candidates, they do not amply cover the ads purchased by non-members such as “supporters” or “well-wishers” of the party who cannot be directly linked to either the party or the candidate. The MCC and the Voluntary Code do not regulate this area adequately. The platforms have stepped in to fill this lacuna using their terms of use policies, requiring paid ads to carry disclaimers, taking down ads that should carry these disclaimers but do not, and maintaining public archives of these ads and the expenditure incurred by the purchaser.

However, these measures are still inadequate in identifying all types of political content and actors and are only partially enforced. There is only a minor punishment of ₹500 for any political content that comes under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for illegal payments made by someone making election expenditures on behalf of a candidate without their written authority. This fine is significantly lower than the substantial amount spent on platform advertising.

More importantly, this self-regulatory code leaves substantial election activity on social media — surrogate advertising, where advertising is not directly funded by the political party or candidate — completely unregulated. In many cases, advertising is not paid for directly by political parties but through networks of supporters. You can read the full issue on Tech Policy Press here.

Use of WhatsApp in electioneering in India

A new report by Srishti Jaswal, based on a study in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network and Princeton University’s Digital Witness Lab, analyzed activity across BJP-affiliated WhatsApp groups in Mandi, a small town in Northern India, to understand the app’s role in the BJP’s 2024 election campaign. It notes that at least 5 million WhatsApp groups are operated by the BJP in India, enabling the party to disseminate information across the country through this tightly-knit network “within 12 minutes.”

While the attention in the West has been primarily on Facebook and Twitter as disseminators of misinformation, in India (much like Brazil and China), messaging services such as WhatsApp play a dominant role. Out of India’s roughly 820 million Internet users, there are over 535 million monthly active users on WhatsApp, and the monthly average number of WhatsApp users surpassed Facebook’s numbers way back in September 2018.

In particular, WhatsApp forwards of image and video files are one of the key modes of disseminating information and news in India. As a result, a large amount of disinformation comes in the form of misleading images and videos via the application —often with a text blurb. Gratuitous videos and images appeal to people's raw emotions more than text messages. They are also amenable to being remixed with false contexts and messaging that may have little to do with the actual image or video.

Misinformation and extreme speech spread on social media and WhatsApp, but the user experience is markedly different on the two platforms. On a social media platform like Facebook, the content users see is mediated by its algorithms, but WhatsApp offers an altogether different experience—simply displaying all messages in reverse chronology (with the recent one first). User actions and responses on Facebook are also mediated by the design of the platform—as users are expected to leave a comment on a post, share it, or react using emojis. WhatsApp does not shape interactions in the same way. In a WhatsApp group, it is up to users as to how to engage.

Norms and practices on WhatsApp have also evolved without any personalized algorithmic training. Each group has its own shared identity and purpose, and violating those is often met with some backlash. There can also be explicit rules about what to share and not to share in groups, with group admins playing an active role in weeding out those who breach these rules and members policing content that they feel does not belong. This aspect of WhatsApp groups may be reminiscent of tightly monitored forum discussions in the first decade of the Web.

In a group with extended family members, “Good morning” messages, jokes, or entertaining forwards may be kosher, but messages against the group's political persuasion could be unwelcome. Messages and forwards sent to one group do not necessarily find easy mobility to other groups, and people are acutely conscious of which messages belong where.

It is also not easy to post the same message or forward it to all your groups or contacts, as you need to send it to each group or person. Therefore, while messages become viral on WhatsApp, managing or monitoring virality is more challenging. However, this aspect of WhatsApp makes it more useful for mobilizing small geographic groups or communities. For example, it is all too common to see WhatsApp messages used to spread rumors that prey on community prejudices and turn those local sentiments into violence.

Groups might also have their own content restrictions, but as late as 2018, WhatsApp offered no method to report abuse or flag misinformation. In September 2018, they finally appointed a single grievance officer for India whom users could contact with concerns and complaints. The grievance officer cannot be contacted via WhatsApp, and a digital signature is required to reach them over email.

In countries such as India, WhatsApp messages are among the biggest propagators of misinformation and the hardest to track. This is mainly because communication is end-to-end, on a more private level, and it becomes very difficult to trace the source of information back to any particular individual. As a result, on WhatsApp, there is much less visibility of the spread of information compared to Facebook or other platforms with more public groups and feeds, as users can only see what is happening in their groups.

Political campaigns can overcome these feature limitations by spreading content through a large and intricate network of people involved in electioneering. This is where the BJP has an edge in India. The Rest of World story notes the extent of the BJP’s WhatsApp group in Mandi to give an idea of how rigorously the party has organized its digital network across the country:

In Mandi, the BJP has a WhatsApp group for everyone. There is a hierarchy of groups organized from the national level down to state, district, sub-district, and so on — all the way to individual "booths," which represent the community of people who vote at the same polling booth. Then there are groups targeted to different demographics and interests: In Mandi, farmers can join at least two farming-focused WhatsApp groups. There are also groups for youth, doctors, ex-servicemen, traders, and intellectuals. Women have the option to join the group "Mahila Morcha," Hindi for "women’s wing." There are groups for official caste classifications and tribe classifications. Some groups are intended only for BJP workers or members; others are open to the general public. There are also BJP-linked groups that aren’t explicitly political. One such group is dedicated to keeping Mandi clean and tidy — but a BJP member is still an admin.

Even though WhatsApp was intended as a private messaging service, it is difficult to think about it today as anything other than a hotbed of group conversations. Groups on WhatsApp are all built around common interests or associations. These could be personal (extended family, friends, weddings, or holiday planning), work-related (company-wide, department, and project-related), about hobbies (cricket, cinema or quizzing), or other communities (housing complex, alumni groups, new parents). Each group is held together by its shared identity.

In an earlier report about fake news in India commissioned by the BBC, this shared identity is recognized as the key driver that makes WhatsApp groups behave like a collective. This helps in achieving homophily, or the drawing together of people in tight networks of like-mindedness. Shared identity, association, and beliefs lead to group members suffering from confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is a well-recognized tendency to process information by looking for or interpreting information consistent with one’s beliefs. This makes WhatsApp the ideal medium for mobilizing members of a group.

Other Developments

Additional Reads

• Article 19: The Center for Democracy and Technology and 8 other organizations published a letter expressing concerns about recent actions taken by India’s central government against journalists, political opposition, and media outlets.

• A recent story on The Quint discusses the differences between political content on WhatsApp and YouTube.

• In The Walrus, Mitali Mukherjee writes in detail about the use of deepfakes and AI in Indian elections.

• If you would like to learn more about the risks of linking Aadhaar Numbers with voter IDs in India, see this report by The Brookings Institution.

• Divij Joshi analyses the use of WhatsApp in electioneering in India in detail in this piece for Mozilla Foundation.

• Rest of the World did a deep dive last week into the burgeoning deep-fake industry in Indian elections.

That is all for this issue. Until, next time.

Amber