The Maharashtra State Election Board (MSEC) has partnered with Gupshup to launch a chatbot in a bid to increase voter engagement and turnout in the upcoming local body elections.The Mahavoter chatbot on Facebook Messenger will encourage young voters, especially first timers, to go out and vote. Developed by Gupshup, in partnership with KraftPixel and Operation Black Dot, a Mumbai-based NGO, the five-point agenda behind the Mahavoter chatbot is to create awareness among voters and help them make an informed choice in these elections.
Avinash Sanas, Deputy Commissioner, MSEC said, "Our main objective is to increase young voter turnout in the local body elections (10 municipal corporations and 25 Zilla Parishads) in Maharashtra, with a sharp focus on creating voter awareness in young inactive and first-time voters.
Of the 3.5 lakh people between 18 and 19 in the city, only 1.37 lakh are on the electoral roll and will cast their vote for the first time in these BMC elections. We believe the major deterrents due to which people generally tend to skip to vote are insufficient knowledge about candidates or location of polling booths or which ward they are registered to.
With the Mahavoter chatbot, we are offering a tech solution which can help solve all these queries and can be easily accessed by the youth over their medium of choice – Facebook. We are confident that this will help us reach out to the young voters much more effectively and encourage them to pay a visit to the voting booths."
Available on Facebook Messenger as 'Operation Black Dot', users can get details on the election process as well as information like voter id search, poll booth and candidate info.
Beerud Sheth, CEO, Gupshup.io said, "We are happy to play a part in helping drive awareness around voting amongst young citizens. A chatbot is the most interactive on-demand way to offer information today, especially to the youth. We are confident that the Mahavoter chatbot will not only increase awareness about state local body elections amongst the youth but will also help draw them out in large numbers to vote in these elections. The campaign is very recent, however there are already 5500 users on the chatbot, with exchange of over 50,000 messages. We are confident that this number will multiply as elections come close."
Some of the other features including finding information on candidates from their ward and looking up their nomination affidavit, and also set reminders to vote, and post status updates after voting. Citizens can also share their expectations with candidates.
The election commission will process all inputs gathered from the chatbot and share it with the candidates later, enabling them to have a deeper understanding of the youth’s hopes.
MSEC has also partnered with Mumbai University to create awareness about the elections amongst students.
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