Telangana lessons for America

Technology played a central role in two recent electoral processes. Telangana used a voter facial recognition technology in the Kompally municipality election on January 22 and this week said it had an accuracy of 80 per cent. Despite political scepticism it was a laudable achievement, with officials attributing the shortfall to the poor quality of voter photographs originally uploaded, or to outdated photos.

The second instance was the inner-party election in Iowa, in the United States, the beginning of choosing the contestants in the next presidential election in November. No surprise as President Donald Trump won the Republican primary with 97 per cent, given that sitting Presidents are rarely challenged within their own party. It was the Democratic Party that surprised everyone by not having a result on Monday evening. Twenty-four hours later, more than a quarter of votes were still to be tallied. It gave no clarity in a race where at one point there were 21 candidates vying to face-off with Mr Trump, and where the top four are locked in a close contest in Iowa. Iowa is important as it can give momentum to a candidate to break from the pack; all recent Democratic presidential candidates have won in Iowa. At the centre of the goof-up was a hastily-developed app that was to tally the votes from various precincts spread across this rural, midwestern state. The app developed a glitch. Mr Trump and his party lost no time in ridiculing the Democrats, asking how they would run the country if they can't manage a small state caucus.

The Democrats see a strong chance to topple Mr Trump in November, but they also see that a flawed candidate or messy infighting between “moderates” and “socialists” could keep Mr Trump in power. In trying to show digital savvy, they failed. Perhaps they should learn from Telangana.