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Bharat’s Inclusive Growth Dims Out The EVM’s Vulnerability Rhetoric
Bharat’s Inclusive Growth Dims Out The EVM’s Vulnerability Rhetoric
The upcoming 2024 General Elections, set to take place across seven phases from April to June 2024, are expected to witness widespread participation from nearly 97 crore registered voters among a populace of 140 crore. These elections will be the world’s biggest electoral exercise given the sheer size of the India’s population, wherein the electorates exceed all of the European Union population put together. Around 55 lakh EVMs will be put in use across 10.5 lakh polling stations, manned by around 1.5 crore polling officials and security staff.
India leveraging technology to streamline the voting process is a natural choice as technology adoption in voting processes has simplified the voting process, improved efficiency and accuracy compared to manual methods. India in the past 25 years, has put electronic voting machines (EVMs) to use in parliamentary elections. PM Modi has time and again reiterated that electronic voting is necessary in India to ensure accuracy as well as efficiency. The rising voter turnout with every parliamentary election in the last decade is a testimony of the rising confidence of the public in the parliamentary practices and reflection of the eagerness to participate in the festival of democracy. The voter turnout has risen from 66.4% in 2014 to 67.4% in 2019.
Unquestionably, the adoption of electronic voting has increased public trust in elections. The custody chain of conventional paper ballots cannot be rationally trusted over that of EVMs, which may be far more susceptible to manipulation. When it comes to reliability, paper ballots are even less trustworthy than electronic voting machines. The Supreme Court denied the appeal to substitute paper ballots for electronic voting machines (EVOs) in the Lok Sabha elections in November 2019. According to the court, no system is flawless. A petition was filed a case in September 2022 asking the Supreme Court bench, which is made up of Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli, to ban electronic voting machines (EVMs) and switch back to conventional ballot paper voting. The petition was denied.
Still, there have been few voices that doubt the operations of EVMs, but interestingly, none till date have been able to prove any fallacies from time to time, when challenged by the Election Commission of India, an autonomous body known for its credibility and independence in India. It maintains a firm stance of EVM utility with respect to time reduction, resource saving and minimizing human error. Infact, any form of malfunction or breakdown of EVMs doesn’t imply they are open to rigging or tampering and has to be seen in the correct light of rectification of an ordinary machine, rather than scapegoat to foster vendetta politics.
The EVMs are auditable, and ensures transparent, accurate, and secure voting, minimizing human error. EVMs have drastically reduced the need for extensive paper printing, conserving resources and saving millions of trees. The EVMs consist of two units: the ballot unit (BU) and the control unit (CU). The BU is used by the voters to cast their votes, and the CU is used by the polling officers to control the voting process. The two units are connected by a cable, and are powered by batteries. EVMs are isolated, standalone machines, and are not connected to the internet or any other network or connectivity (wireless or wired), preventing external interference or hacking. EVMs also do not have any external hardware port for connection to any other device. Hence, no tampering is possible and there is no chance of hacking by remote devices. EVMs have a software program, which is encrypted and can only accept data from the BU. The software program is also protected by a security seal, and cannot be altered or replaced without breaking the seal. The software program is also verified and certified by an independent technical committee before and after each election. Further, across the last decade, its often seen that a losing opposition looking for incorrect explanations for its defeat have been quite liberally using this stance to escape off accountability for their dismal poll results.