History of EVMs in Indian Elections

EVMs were first used in India in the 1982 Kerala Assembly elections (by-election). However, SC struck down the election since Representation of People Act, 1951, and Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, did not allow use of EVMs. Following this, the RPA 1951 was amended in 1988 to allow usage of EVMs. In 1999, they were used for the first time in the entire state for Goa Legislative Assembly elections. In 2004, EVMs were used for the first time in Lok Sabha elections.

Recently, there have been controversies surrounding EVMs regarding their safety feature. Following arguments were raised against their use:

• Transparency: An electronic display of the voter’s selection may not be the same as the vote stored electronically in the machine’s memory. To bridge this gap, VVPATs were introduced. However, EC’s VVPAT auditing is restricted to one randomly chosen polling booth per constituency, which will fail to detect faulty EVMs 98%-99% of the time.

• Verifiability: It is argued that only the vote number can be verified and not the voting choice.

• Secrecy: With the paper ballot, the EC could mix ballot papers from different booths before counting, so that voting preferences could not be connected to a locality. Counting in EVMs is equivalent to booth-wise counting, which allows one to discern voting patterns & renders marginalized communities vulnerable to pressure.

• Possibility of hacking: Accusations of EVMs getting hacked or even the possibility of them being hacked creates a mistrust about electoral processes in the minds of the public.

• Malfunctioning EVMs: Though provided with specific training for correct usage of EVMs, officers sometimes don't pay attention & connect machines in wrong order.

However, the ECI has time and again upheld the rationale behind the use of EVM’s and argued against going back to ballot papers. Following safety features within the EVM’s make them safe to use:

♤ Non-reprogrammable: It consists of an integrated circuit (IC) chip that is one time programmable (software burnt at the time of manufacturing) and cannot be reprogrammed.

♤ No external communication: EVMs are not networked by any wired or wireless system, nor do they have any frequency receiver and data decoder, so there cannot be any external communication. Control Unit (CU) accepts only specially encrypted & dynamically coded data from Ballot Unit (BU).

♤ Other countries like Netherlands and Germany (which discontinued the use of EVMs) use computer based EVMs which are prone to hacking, while Indian EVMs are standalone machines.

♤ Secure Source Code: Software and source code developed in-house by selected group of engineers in BEL and ECIL.

♤ One Vote per Elector: It allows a voter to cast the vote only once. The next vote can be recorded only after Presiding Officer enables the ballot on CU.

♤ Time stamping of votes: EVMs are installed with real time clock, full display system and time-stamping of every key pressing so there is no possibility of system generated/latent votes.

♤ Secure against post-manufacturing tampering: The machines with self diagnostics shut down automatically in case of tampering.

♤ Procedural Checks and Balances: There are also various Standard Operating Procedures like functional checks, trial run, random allocation, multi-stage testing, dry run and safe & secure storage post voting, included for ensuring free and fair elections.

While there have been cases of “malfunction” (which suggests a technical defect), there has not been any case of proven “tampering’” (manipulation aimed at fraud). In 2017, EC even held an ‘EVM Challenge’, where it invited political parties to demonstrate/proof any allegations of tampering. However, cost and efficiency considerations are secondary to the integrity of the election. EC must ensure that any unjustified suspicion in the minds of public is removed through:

• 100% deployment of VVPAT in all elections and by-polls and on detection of any faulty EVM in a constituency must entail the VVPAT hand-counting of all the EVMs in that constituency.

• ECI must use Totalizer Machines for counting of votes. It increases the secrecy of voting by counting votes polled at 14 polling booths together, as against the current practice of announcing booth-wise results.

• Regular demonstrations must be organized by EC in all the poll-going States to reduce information gap on EVMs.

• EC should provide training to officers in small batches and focus on hands-on-learning. As a long term structural reform, EC must be provided with an independent secretariat so that it can have a dedicated cadre of officers.