MyVoteQ app fails to work on big day

Voters unable to find out the number of people standing in queue at polling booths

Voters wait for their turn to cast their vote at a polling booth at Boyapati Sivarama Krishna Municipal High School at Moghalrajpuram during the Assembly and Lok Sabha general elections, in Vijayawada on Thursday April 11, 2019. ;

The ‘MyVoteQ’ app launched by Chief Electoral Officer Gopal Krishna Dwivedi to help voters avoid queues at their polling booths reportedly failed to live up to its billing on election day.

“Don’t go out for voting thinking there would be a long queue at your polling station. To check the live queue at your polling station, Andhra Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer has introduced the“My Vote Q” app,” reads the description of the smartphone application.

However, many voters said they attempted to use the app to find out the number of people standing in line at their polling booths, but were unable to do so as the app failed. ‘No queue added yet’ was the message that was flashed by the app in most cases, the voters said.

In some cases, the app showed a low number of people standing in queue while in reality there were serpentine queues.

Other issues

Voters also faced difficulty in locating the polling booth at most of the centres as no particular order was followed in allocation of rooms at several centres.

“Forget about knowing your queue status in advance. We were unable to spot the polling booths as the booth numbers were painted below chest level, and were blocked from view by the people standing in queue,” said Jaswanth, a voter at Andhra Loyola College.

Though the State Election Commission launched the application many weeks ago, not many users had downloaded it.