How ballot shifted from paper to EVM

Leaders who lost recent Assembly Elections including Mayawati, the BSP President alleged that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), were managed in favour of the BJP and demanded the a paper ballot election, following her crushing defeat in Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, a demand also backed by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.

How do the EVMs work?

• Every EVM machine has a control unit, a ballot unit and a 5-metre cable.
• The machine can be operated with a 5 volt battery.
• The way it works is that a voter is supposed to press a button against the name or photo of the candidate she wishes to vote for.
• The moment a button is pressed, the machine locks itself.
• It opens now only with a new ballot number.
• An EVM registers only five votes in a minute.
• EVMs became popular because they were easier to carry and later count the votes on.
• They have been a part of India's election process for the last 15 years.
• While all this sounds alright, there is enough evidence to suggest EVMs are also unsafe and unreliable.

EC decision to switch to EVMs

• Paper ballots have inherent problems — their printing, storage and transportation involve huge expenditure; lakh of ballot boxes are needed for each election, and there are logistics issues with their safe storage between elections.
• There were instances when the number of invalid votes (marked incorrectly by illiterate voters) exceeded the winning margin.
• Also, the counting of ballot papers could take a full day or more.
• To overcome these problems, the EC approached the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) in 1977 to develop the prototype of an EVM.
• On August 6, 1980, the EC demonstrated the ECIL prototype to representatives of political parties to a generally positive reaction.
• The EC subsequently also drafted Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) to manufacture EVMs.
• EVMs first used in elections
• The EC decided on a trial run at a few polling stations during the 1982 Kerala Assembly elections.
• Since the Representation of the People (RP) Act, 1951, only allowed ballot papers and ballot boxes, it urged the government to amend the law.
• It did not, however, wait for the amendment, and invoked its emergency powers under Article 324 to use voting machines in 50 out of the 84 polling stations of Paravur constituency, where Congress candidate A C Jose was pitted against the CPI’s Sivan Pillai.

What are the threats?

• EVMs can easily be hacked.
• The complete profile of a voter can be accessed through EVMs.
• EVMs can be used to manage the results of an election.
• The EVMs can easily be tampered by an election official.
• Even the election software of an EVM can be changed.

That EVMs can be hacked is a threat that has been given not only in India, but in many other countries, which is why a number of them have banned the voting machines.

• Netherlands banned it for lack of transparency.
• Ireland, after three years of research worth 51 million pounds, decided to junk EVMs.
• Germany declared EVMs unconstitutional and banned it.
• Italy also dropped e-voting since its results could be easily managed.
• In the United States, California and many other states banned EVMs if they did not have a paper trail.
• According to a CIA security expert, Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine stopped using EVMs after massive rigging was found.
• England and France have never used EVMs.

First Challenge by CPI

• CPI’s Pillai, filed a writ petition in Kerala High Court days before polling, questioning the use and functioning of EVMs.
• After the EC demonstrated the machines to the HC, the court refused to interfere.
• After Pillai won by a margin of just 123 votes, the Congress’s Jose went to the HC saying the RP Act, 1951, and Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, did not allow use of EVMs.
• The HC again ruled in the EC’s favour, but the Supreme Court reversed the verdict and ordered a repoll at all 50 polling stations using conventional ballots. This time, Jose won.
• The EC then suspended the use of EVMs until Parliament, in 1988, inserted Section 61A in the RP Act and Rules, legitimising them.
• In November 1998, they were used on an experimental basis in 16 Assembly seats — 5 each in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and 6 in Delhi. In the Lok Sabha elections of 2004, the entire country voted using EVMs.

Courts allowed PILs on the alleged tamper ability of EVMs

• The 1984 SC verdict striking down the pilot run of EVMs in Kerala had little to do with the machines’ efficiency.
• t was passed on the ground that there was no provision for them in the existing law. But political parties and experts have repeatedly questioned the functioning of EVMs in court.
• In 2004, advocate Pran Nath Lekhi sought to establish before the Delhi High Court that EVMs had been doctored to favour the UPA in the Lok Sabha elections.
• Lekhi pleaded that the result of the election was the opposite of the projections (of an NDA win) made by opinion and exit polls.
• The HC found no merit in the petition, and Lekhi was forced to withdraw.
• In 2005, the Karnataka High Court upheld the use of EVMs, and described them as a “great achievement” and a source of “national pride”.
• The HC order was passed on an election petition filed in 1999 by an unsuccessful candidate who challenged the integrity of EVMs used in the Yelahanka parliamentary constituency.
• The court examined BEL scientists and studied the safety features of the machines before ruling that the EVMs were tamper-proof, and an attempt to doctor them could not be kept hidden.

EC response to criticisms of EVMs

• From August 3 to 8, 2009, the Commission undertook the extraordinary step of inviting sceptics to demonstrate the alleged fallibility of EVMs, using 100 randomly sourced machines from 10 states.
• “The outcome of this exercise is that none of the persons, who were given the opportunity, could actually demonstrate any tamperability of the ECI-EVM, in any of the 100 machines put on display.
• The persons either failed or chose not to demonstrate,” the EC said in a press note on August 8
• The machines, the EC said, could neither be reprogrammed nor controlled by an external device. “The source code (for the EVM) is so designed that it allows a voter to cast the vote only once. The next vote can be recorded only after the Presiding Officer enables the ballot on the Control Unit. In between the machine becomes dead to any signal from outside (except from the Control Unit),” the 2009 statement said.
• The Commission has said that comparisons between EVMs in India and abroad, where they have failed, “are both misplaced and misguided”.
• This is because “most of the systems used in other countries are PC based and running on operating systems. Hence, these could be vulnerable to hacking.
• “The EVM in India on the other hand is a fully standalone machine without being part of any network and with no provision for any input… The software in the EVM chip is one time programmable and is burnt into the chip at the time of manufacture.
• Nothing can be written on the chip after manufacture. Thus the ECI-EVMs are fundamentally different… (and) any surmise based on foreign studies or operating system based EVMs… would be completely erroneous.”

EC agreed to Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)

• As the large number of parties, activists and candidates constantly alleging rigging of EVMs despite repeated assurances, the EC called a meeting of all state and national political parties on October 4, 2010 to discuss the issue.
• At this meeting, some parties suggested that in order to increase transparency, the EC should explore the possibility of introducing VVPAT, in which a voter immediately gets a printout of her vote, which is then deposited in the ballot box.
• So, every voter can see whether her vote has been registered correctly.
• At the same time, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who was then the president of the Janata Party, filed a writ petition in Delhi High Court alleging that EVMs were vulnerable to rigging, and demanding a paper back-up of the EVM vote.
• The EC informed the court that it was already exploring the idea of VVPAT.
• In 2012, the HC observed that EVMs in their present form were not “tamper-proof”, and the VVPAT system may be developed early in consultation with political parties.
• Subsequently, the Supreme Court ordered the EC to use VVPATs across all seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

EVM hacking controversy of 2010

• The biggest controversy around EVMs, in 2010, three scientists claimed they had developed a way to hack into the machines.
• A video posted on the Internet by the researchers purportedly showed them connecting a home-made electronic device to an actual ECI-EVM. Professor J Alex Halderman from the University of Michigan, who led the project, said the device allowed them to change the results on the machine by sending it messages from a mobile phone.
• The EC once again denied the allegations, and nothing much came of the video except that the Indian scientist out of the three, Hari Prasad, was arrested for allegedly stealing an EVM from the Collector’s office in Mumbai.

2014 General Elections

• The 2014 Lok Sabha Election saw several allegations of EVM-rigging.
• One of the prominent ones was when Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi alleged that an EVM had been tampered by the BJP and said the Congress would take it up with the Election Commission.
• During a mandatory mock poll in Jorhat on April 3, 2014, every time a button was pressed, the vote went in favour of BJP.
• Congress MP Sanjay Nirupam, who who was defeated in the Mumbai North constituency, alleged EVM-tampering. “Congress candidates have been defeated in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh with massive leads, which are not possible.
• The contract of the EVM had been given to a multi-national company based in Gujarat.
• On May 16, 2014, social activist and Aam Aadmi Party candidate for the Mumbai North East constituency Medha Patkar filed a complaint about the possible rigging of votes in her constituency. Her complaint with the election commission states that an address tag used to identify an EVM machine was found on the streets of Mumbai.

Maharashtra Civic Body Polls 2017

• Recently, the Congress, NCP, Shiv Sena had alleged of possible tampering and manipulations by BJP in the EVMs in the recent elections to 10 Municipal Corporations and 25 Zilla Parishads in Maharashtra.
• The city BJP chief’s son was declared the winner from the ward, but Shiv Sena claimed that the total of the votes received by each candidate exceeded the total number of votes cast. In Mumbai, independent candidate Shrikant Shirsat also claimed that he got zero votes at the booth near his residence in Saki Naka alleging the EVMs were defective.

Controversy now headed

• All political parties have criticised EVMs only when they have lost elections.
• Five days ahead of the Delhi Assembly election results in February 2015, Arvind Kejriwal had tweeted about possible tampering of EVMs.
• He did not pursue his allegation after the same EVMs registered a record mandate for his party, which won 67 out of 70 seats.
• Similarly, while the BJP seems happy with EVMs today, before the 2014 general election, it had alleged tampering on many occasions — in fact, BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao had even written a book titled Democracy At Risk! Can We Trust Our Electronic Voting Machines?, with a foreword by L K Advani. Mayawati is only the latest politician to attack EVMs; before her the RJD, TDP, SP, JD(U) and Left have all targeted the machines.

Election Commission Justification

• The Election Commission continued to vouch for the electronic voting machines’ credibility, even as the AAP joined the BSP to cast aspersions on the functioning of the
• devices.
• The commission said that it had been successfully using the EVMs since 2000 in every election, and had ‘full confidence in the absolute credibility’ of the machines.
• The poll panel also noted that the credibility of the EVMs had been successfully recognised by the courts on several occasions.
• Officials pointed out that the EVMs were mechanically and electronically designed to prevent any tampering or manipulation. The programmes used in the EVMs were burnt into one-time programmable or masked chips (hardware) so that they could not be altered or tampered with, they explained.
• The possibility of data corruption is almost zero since the machines were not networked either by wire or by wireless to any other machine or system, the officials argued