India’s electoral democracy is entering a new phase in which the most consequential decisions about voting may be made not at the polling station but inside databases. The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls has brought this problem into sharp focus. Electoral rolls must obviously be maintained. Dead voters, duplicates and those who have permanently moved away cannot remain indefinitely on the rolls. But once the task of identifying legitimate voters becomes increasingly dependent on centralised digital systems, a different question arises: who decides whether a discrepancy in a database is sufficient reason to cast doubt on a citizen’s right to vote?

This is not an argument against technology. Digital systems can make electoral administration more efficient and reduce opportunities for human error or manipulation. The danger lies in treating technological systems as neutral arbiters when the data on which they operate is neither perfect nor socially uniform. India is an unusually difficult environment for a database to capture accurately. People migrate for work. Addresses can be informal or change frequently. Names have multiple spellings and transliterations. Families may live across states while retaining........

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