Digital Ballots and Democracy | Prof. Subodh V. Sharma | TEDxIITDelhi

Elections are the backbone of any functioning democracy, but for electoral systems to earn public trust, they must be transparent, secure, and understandable — not just to experts, but to every voter. This talk explores how technology is offering solutions to conduct elections, from electronic voting machines and cryptographic audits to privacy-preserving voter rolls. Drawing on examples from around the world, the speaker highlights the core democratic principles that make a voting system trustworthy: verifiability, privacy, integrity, and auditability. The talk presents a vision for evolving election technologies in ways that improve transparency and verifiability, without overwhelming users or compromising existing infrastructure and robustness that large democracies demand. It concludes with practical, research-backed solutions that blend cryptography, usability, and public accountability. Dr. Subodh Sharma is an Assoc. Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Delhi and the inaugural recipient of the prestigious PK Gupta Chair Professorship in Privacy & Decentralization. He serves on the Special Interest Group on the Future of Internet, constituted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), GoI. From 2022 to 2024, he held the role of Assoc. Dean of Academics (Outreach and New Initiatives) at IITD. He has authored over 40 publications in leading conferences and journals spanning Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, Data Privacy, and Formal Verification. His recent work explores large-scale public digital systems, including digital identity frameworks, payment infrastructures, electronic voting, and e-Governance platforms. He has contributed to critical analyses of Aadhaar and UPI, and has also written on these topics in national media. He is a recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award at IIT Delhi in 2022. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx