The world 's biggest democracy just had an election.

The world 's biggest democratic election... — Marathon election...

A mammoth undertaking... — The world 's biggest exercise in democracy.

In India, voters picked its central government for the next five years.

An eighth of the world 's population was eligible to vote in this election.

This year, 2019, there are 900 million eligible voters in India,

making this the largest democratic exercise in the history of humanity.

But this isn't a video about Indian politics,

because before India 's people can even cast their vote, the election needs to come to them.

Polling stations need to be set up wherever people live.

And in one of the largest and most populous countries in the world, that isn't an easy task.

India has to reach voters in coastal cities in the south,

in the rural regions of the west and jungles to the east, and everywhere in between.

And what's more, they want every Indian citizen to be within 2 kilometers of a voting station.

That's only about 25 city blocks, no matter where you are in the country.

It's an incredibly ambitious goal and yet, somehow they're able to do it.

This is the biggest election in the world and I wanted to know, how does it work?

Every election, a team of government officials and security forces get on a boat in the east of India

to take off towards this island.

They travel about 100 kilometers to get here, all to securely deliver these : electronic voting machines, or EVM s ;

the instrument that logs India 's votes ; the heart of this elaborate election process.

India has 2. 3 million voting machines for its 900 million voters.

So getting these machines close to every voter is a big logistical undertaking.

That's why India doesn't have a single election day.

Instead it's closer to an election month with multiple phases that last weeks.

This process takes more than 11 million election officials and security forces,

who move from polling station to polling station to polling station,

from densely populated cities to the rural areas where the majority of Indians live.