by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews, Politics
By V.S. Chandrasekar & Mohd Asim Khan,
New Delhi : Ruling out the possibility of going back to paper ballots in place of electronic voting machines (EVMs), the Election Commission says it is working on a formula that will “minimise errors and maximise confidence” of the stakeholders in the working of the electronic voting machines.
It also says simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the assemblies are not possible now given the legal constraints. It says no political party has demanded going back to ballot papers at an all-party meeting with the Election Commission recently.
“I have been reading in the newspapers. That’s why it must be coming in the media. Some editorials have come, some lead articles have come (about EVMs) that something which has eradicated booth capturing has eradicated the muscle power. The EVMs have eradicated that stigma on the our voters that they cannot even vote; that so many votes are invalidated. Even at times victory margin is less than number of invalid votes.
“So all these issues have been flagged by even media that there is no point going back to that (paper ballots). Why do you want to bring back those days? When people never used to talk about campaigner or anything, now they would talk how many booths did you capture. If you captured 83 and I have captured 150. I am going to win,” Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) O.P. Rawat told IANS in an interview at his office at Nirvachan Sadan, the headquarters of the Election Commission of India.
He was replying to a question on the opposition demand for going back to the paper ballot system in view of the apprehensions that the EVMS could be manipulated, an allegation some major opposition parties have levelled in the past few years after electoral defeats.
The parties also demanded increasing the sample number of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) for physical counting to cross check whether the vote had gone to the intended candidate.
Rawat also said no party demanded dispensing with the EVMs and a total return to the paper ballots during the all-party conference convened by the Election Commission last month.
“Yes, I have been reading in the newspapers,” he said when told about the claim of some leaders of having made such a demand.
“Media has been telling that and, therefore, the Election Commission is just acting as the constitutional authority to conduct the elections and in the process the Commission has to keep all major stakeholders satisfied. Therefore, we are trying to convince them since in the all-party meeting they all said that the number (of VVPATs) should be increased (for taking up sample counting).”
The CEC said at the all-party meeting basically the points raised by parties included that either more slips of VVPATs should be counted because right now the counting is done from only one randomly-selected polling station.
“So as of now, VVPATs will be counted in 4,120 Assembly constituencies that form part of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies. But since they (parties) have suggested that more should be counted, the Commission is seized of the matter. The Commission is examining.
“There are two issues — one is our stakeholders should be happy and satisfied but at the same time, since we are operating in a global environment it will be decided whether it (sample) should be one per cent, 10 per cent or 12 per cent. It will be done on a scientific basis to minimise the error and maximise the confidence level of the stakeholders…..so statistically, it will be a sample size which minimises errors and maximises the confidence level to 99.9999 per cent…that kind of thing the Commission is looking for,” the CEC said.
Asked what would be the ideal size of samples, he said, “if that was known, we would have ordered that. We need statisticians to work on this. So I can’t predict how many days it will take but it will take more days.”
To another query, Rawat said “the issue was not of practicability but a solution that is acceptable to all and whenever this solution is available, say within the next two-three weeks, the Commission will take a decision.”
But, he said, he cannot say definitely whether the new solution could be applied in the coming round of Assembly elections in four or five states.
Asked about the demand from opposition parties for a cap on the expenses on party account, Rawat said there can be no different views on this. The Commission has already submitted a reform proposal that would like a ceiling on the party expenditure like there is a ceiling on candidates’ expenditure.
“But this question should be put to all the parties. Because it is not that this party is in power for eternity. you were in power…you could have brought it,” he said.
Asked about the simultaneous elections being pushed by BJP, the CEC said it was not possible given the current laws as the Constitution had to be amended and there should be amendments in other electoral laws.
He said even the Law Commission has said what the Election Commission had said in 2016. “But the Election Commission had said this in 2015 when we were asked that you (Parliament) will have to amend the Constitution. Sections of the Representation of the People Act have to be amended since you have to provide for logistics.
“Logistics would have three issues. One is the number of machines, number two Central Armed Police Force because generally political parties these days insist we don’t have any faith in the state police. So if you want simultaneous elections you will need more whatever is available now will not do. So more of that, then more of vehicles, more of police personnel, more of all that. So those are logistical issues that will have to be addressed before doing it.”
(V.S. Chandrasekar can be contacted at chandru.v@ians.in and Mohd Asim Khan at mohd.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood,
To conduct the polling for parliamentary election and those for the provincial assemblies the election commission of India (ECI) procures the EVMs from two public sector undertakings namely Bharat Electronics Ltd, Bangalore and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, Hyderabad. Both of these public sector undertakings are controlled by the central government and not by the ECI nor through a multi-party control mechanism.
- Procuring the EVMs for elections of municipal corporations and other local bodies is the discretion of the state election commissioners. It’s a subject matter of investigation as to from where they buy these machines. Also, the voters need to know upto what extent the prescribed mechanism of the upkeep and handling of the EVMs are tamper proof.
EVM components
- In India the voting machines have two parts. On the balloting unit the voters press the button and the control unit gives the command to the polling officer who sits in the polling booth. These components of the EVM are inter-connected and also, through a fifteen feet long cable, the control unit’s button rests with the polling officer. One EVM can record maximum 3,840 votes.
- Before the EVMs came into vogue, a ballot paper was given to each voter after which nobody other than the voter had any control on the casting of the votes. The manual ballot has, in the recent past, been replaced by a system where the polling officer presses the ballot button and only then the balloting unit is open for casting the vote. After a voter presses a button on this unit, the red LED indicator should light up and a whistle sound should come from the machine. But if that doesn’t happen then millions of the illiterate and rural voters would not realize that the vote has not been cast.
Polling Officer’s discretion
- Simultaneously, after the button is pressed, the EVM is again locked automatically for any further voting. Pressing any button again will not be counted as a vote. This system has originally been devised to ensure that no registered voter can cast multiple votes. Yet, avoidable discretion does now lie with the polling officer who has the EVM control trigger in hand. This surely casts aspersions on high values of total democratic transparency.
- As the EVM unit can accommodate only a given maximum number of votes, it enables a candidate to easily know about the number of persons who have voted for him through that particular EVM. That is susceptible to vitiating the winner’s mind towards those areas where he was not the voters’ choice.
No multi-party technical pre-election check of EVMs
- In response to a query the Election Commission of India has recently clarified that during production of EVMs in the factory, functional testing is done by the production group as per the laid down quality plan and performance test procedures. Samples of EVMs from production batches are periodically checked for functionality by a Quality Assurance Group, which is an independent unit within the manufacturing firms.
- However, nowhere it is mentioned in the ECI’s response that technical representatives of various political parties are ever able to check the EVMs in any manner.
RTI queries
- Against this backdrop and in the context of the upcoming elections for the three Municipal Corporations Delhi due in April 2017 the ZFI has raised the following RTI queries with the Delhi state election commissioner: (i) The name & address of the suppliers from whom the Delhi State Election Commission has bought the electronic voting machines (EVMs) which will be used for conducting the MCD Election 2017. (ii) The number of such machines. (iii) The date on which such machines were bought and brought to Delhi. (iv) The mode of transportation of such machines. (v) The location of safe custody of these machines. (vi) The arrangements for safe custody of such machines. (vii) How many security personnel are deployed every 24 hours to guard these machines. (viii) After arrival in the custody of Delhi State Election Commission on which dates these machines were subjected to technical checking and verification of their authenticity and by whom. (ix) If yes, then please provide copies of these reports. (x) What is the professional expertise of the persons who did such checking. (xi) From where did they receive the required training and when. And, (xii) on which date the upcoming MCD election candidates and their technically equipped representatives will be offered to inspect these machines.
EVM tampering possible
- The possibility of the EVMs being tampered with cannot be denied. Their safe custody under the EC guards does give a sense of satisfaction. Yet there are so many slips between the cup and the lip.
- It is satisfying to some extent that the operating program of EVM’s control unit is engraved permanently in silicon by the manufacturers. This program supposedly cannot be changed once the unit is manufactured, even by the manufacturer. But, from beginning to the end, the manufacturers too are voters, and, effectively at the beck and call of the political party in power.
Technically equip ECI’s internal checking team
- So the questions arise as to what is the internal mechanism available with the election commission to check and satisfy itself that the EVMs bought by it are not pre-rigged ? From where does the commission’s staff deployed for this purpose get training to carry out such checking ? In the polling booths if the polling officer does not press the button after a person has voted, how do the millions of illiterate rural voters make sure that their vote has been cast ?
EVM’s pitfalls noted in USA
- In a news item “Voting Machines Put U.S. Democracy at Risk” the CNN News Anchor Lou Dobbs reported that during the 2004 presidential election, one voting machine in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio reportedly added nearly 3,900 additional votes to George Bush’s total. Officials caught the machine’s error because only 638 voters had cast ballots at that precinct.
- A report from the US Election Science Institute found that in Cuyahoga County the electronic voting machines’ four sources of vote totals – individual ballots, paper trail summary, election archives and memory cards – didn’t match up with each other. The totals were all different, and the report concluded that relying on the current system for Cuyahoga County’s more than 1.3 million people should be viewed as “a calculated risk.” Lou Dobbs asked, are we really willing to risk our democracy?
MIchigan scientists’ hacking of Indian EVM
- Julian Siddle of BBC had reported that scientists at the University of Michigan developed a technique to hack into Indian electronic voting machines. After connecting a home-made device to a machine, the researchers were able to change results by sending text messages from a mobile phone, as confirmed by Professor J Alex Halderman, who led the project. “Our lookalike display board intercepts the vote totals that the machine is trying to display and replaces them with dishonest totals – basically whatever the bad guy wants to show up at the end of the election”, said the US professor. In addition, they added a small microprocessor which they say can change the votes stored in the machine between the election and the vote-counting session. The researchers added that the paper and wax seals put on the EVMs could be easily faked.
Princeton findings
- In the US, there are four main manufacturers of electronic voting systems, none of which has been demonstrated to be more secure than the others. A Princeton University study found that hackers can easily tamper with electronic voting machines by installing a virus to disable machines and change the vote totals.
- Princeton researchers also found that “malicious software” running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little risk of detection, and that anyone with access can install the software. The study also suggests these machines are susceptible to viruses.
Government Accountability Office’s inference
- A 2005 Government Accountability Office report on electronic voting confirmed the worst fears of watchdog groups and election officials. The report said, “There is evidence that some of these concerns have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.”
Newsweek report
- Newsweek also reported that “it requires only a few minutes of pre-election access to a Diebold EVM to open the machine and insert a PC card that, if it contained malicious code, could reprogram the machine to give control to the violator. The machine could go dead on Election Day or throw votes to the wrong candidate. Worse, it’s even possible for such ballot-tampering software to trick authorized technicians into thinking that everything is working fine, an illusion you couldn’t pull off with pre-electronic systems.” Consequently, many US states have taken action to implement paper trails.
Introduce multi-party EVM control
- Section 61A of the Indian Representation of People Act states “the giving and recording of votes by voting machines in such manner as may be prescribed, may be adopted….”. The manner so prescribed needs to be examined by technical representatives of the political parties with a view to strengthen the system and make it foolproof as well as fully transparent. The companies manufacturing EVM machines and the checking and upkeep of these machines should be controlled jointly through a multi-party mechanism.
Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood, is the President of ZakatIndia.org. He can be reached at info@zakatindia.org
