Every election season in our country is fraught with various kinds of narratives, fake news, fake propaganda and whatnot. Most recently, especially after the Haryana and Maharashtra assembly elections, misgivings about the efficacy, ethics, and security of electronic voting machines (EVMs) have arisen sharply and are making the rounds in various social media. It is therefore natural for a common citizen like me, to ask whether the EVMs, which we have almost taken for granted, are showing the true results of the election or something very much fishy about them. Has my vote gone to the right candidate or is it simply rigged to favour one candidate or one party?
These questions are puzzling as many of us will really have doubts and will think that perhaps it is better to go back to paper ballots. So, I decided to sit down and do some fact-checking and digging. The analysis is what I’m writing in this article. I shall proceed purely scientifically and analyse my questions about EVM on four basic points — (1) Basic logic about the present controversy, (2) Ethics of using EVM, (3) What statistics says about the use of EVM, and lastly(4) Technical possibility of hacking an EVM.
Basic logical reasonings
Let us first ask some fundamental questions. Why is it so that, either in a parliamentary (Lok Sabha) or an assembly (Bidhan Sabha) constituency election, when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) loses or performs badly, no question about EVM manipulation has ever surfaced, at least in recent times? Why is it so that, when the so-called opposition loses then only the question of EVM manipulation becomes pertinent? I believe the BJP itself was in shock when it lost the Ayodhya seat (Faizabad) in Uttar Pradesh (UP) parliamentary election, especially after the establishment of the Ram Mandir. Fast forward three months and we have the assembly by-polls in UP. When the BJP and its alliance won 7 out of 9 seats, suddenly the question of EVM manipup! We must at this point remember that in both cases, Yogi Adityanath was the Chief Minister of UP in a BJP-led government. The same happens with Haryana afterwards and most recently with Maharashtra. However, when Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) won in Jharkhand, which is a staunch anti-BJP party, the EVMs conveniently showed the right results! The same happened in the Wayanad assembly election, where Priyanka Gandhi won by more than a 4.0 lakh margin, nobody questions the EVM! This is very important as this very commonplace and pertinent question has also been raised by the Honourable Supreme Court of India.
Ethics of using EVM
Let us now come to the ethical side of using an EVM. Yes, an EVM is an electronic equipment (a machine) and like all other machines, it can malfunction and it does malfunction. However, it is also true that like any other machine, it is being continuously upgraded and improved. So, just because an EVM can malfunction (which definitely can be corrected), should we stop using the EVM? It will be like the statement “As I’m almost a hundred per cent certain to die during an aeroplane crash, I simply should avoid travelling by aeroplane”! Or should we respond to a controversial remark on EVM by powerful people such as Elon Musk? Elon Musk is the world’s richest person and a technology enthusiast, innovator, and known for encouraging cutting-edge technology, from self-driving cars to reusable rocket modules. So, should we justify some people advocating for going back to the paper ballot from EVM, based on a comment by Elon Musk on EVM, while Musk himself has never backtracked on any technological advancement? If EVMs are hackable, so are paper ballots. When currency notes can be successfully forged, stamp papers can be duplicated, by the same logic, ballot papers can also be forged. So, the same question will arise — should we also then stop using ballot papers?
Statistics of using EVM in India
While we do not find many scientific studies, especially on the use of EVMs in elections in India, there are a couple of studies which make some important observations. One such paper is by Debnath et al. [1], published through the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) in 2017. The SSRN is a widely used preprint repository for social science but is not peer-reviewed though. In this work, Debnath et al. statistically studied assembly elections in India from 1976 to 2007. According to Debnath et al., in constituencies which are marked for booth capture, ballot box stuffing and other malpractices, the voter turnout and number of rejected votes have significantly decreased after the introduction of EVMs, which indicates toward reduction in illegal voting with EVMs. The study further finds that participation of women and marginalized communities has increased after EVMs are introduced and simultaneously the instances of rigging and intimidation have gone down. One more important finding of the study is that the introduction of EVMs has greatly reduced the winning margin and vote share of the winning candidate. This electoral behaviour indicated maturity on the part of the voters and is surely a sign of a mature and stable democracy. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the political parties to get a vote share based on empty and hollow promises. A stark example of this fact is the razor-thin winning margin of Nana Patole (the Congress Chief in Maharashtra) in the recently concluded assembly election, where he won by a margin of just 208 votes. Surprisingly, no one has called for re-election in this case!
Technical possibility of hacking an EVM
In context of many other countries worldwide, there are many scientific studies, published in reputed and peer-reviewed journals about EVM. However, we could not find any such study except a 2010 conference paper by Scott Wolchok et al, which looked at the security features of the EVM used in Indian election. Note that this paper is quite old and EVMs have gone through several technical upgrades since then. Apparently, there have been many articles and studies on the security of these EVMs, but almost all are either newspaper articles or articles published in conference proceedings and preprints. These articles do not go through any peer review process, which is the backbone of scientific and credible publishing. However, assuming that the findings of these studies are correct, we can see that almost all these studies indicate that the EVMs used in Indian elections are quite vulnerable to security lapses and are hackable. It is important to note that we could not find a single scientific study, published in a peer-reviewed and reputed journal, which has technically and practically analysed a situation, which indicates that the electoral process involving EVMs in India is NOT credible! Coming to the practical side of it, the most important issue is that while technically an EVM is hackable, practically is it at all possible to rig an entire election? It is like questions, we generally ask in science. For example, given the number of stars and planetary systems in the Universe, technically, there have to be billions of intelligent civilizations! But have we ever found one? Similarly, while an EVM can be technically manipulated, in reality, it is almost next to impossible to do so, given the layers of security employed and the chain of custody applied while maintaining the EVMs, during an election process. Consider the following facts.
The EVMs used in Indian elections are quite rudimentary electronic machines, just like our good old home calculator, without any connectivity provisions (through Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or wired) at all. Besides, every EVM comes with a preprogrammed permanent memory like a vinyl gramophone record which can ONLY play the song recorded there. Neither can one change the song nor can one re-record another. If any modifications of the record are attempted, it will just be destroyed. Just like that if I need to hack an EVM to favour a particular candidate, I need to physically open the machine and as it cannot be programmed (it does not have any programmable port to connect a computer), I need to change the motherboard (the printed circuit board which contains the complete circuitry of the machine) and replace it with a hacked one. Note that this process must be done with all the EVMs used in a constituency, one by one, as the machines are randomly distributed, and overseen by electoral personnel and representatives of the concerned political parties. Besides, no two EVMs can be connected physically as they are just simply un-connectable. Also, every EVM comes with a unique security feature so that if one tries to force open the box (without authorization), the machine simply becomes useless. All these technical details about the safety features of an EVM are publicly displayed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in their website.
So, the only way by which thousands of EVMs can be manipulated is by physically altering each machine one by one (by replacing the motherboard). Now, given the layers of security applied to the chain of custody of the EVMs, several months prior to an election and till the day of counting, the process seems almost impossible. Hence, the only way an EVM can be practically and technically altered in large scale is by changing them at the manufacturing stage (just like the hacked pagers used by Hizbollah in Lebanon). If we now assume that somehow the EVMs are compromised at the manufacturing stage, will it then be possible for the ECI to randomly carry out checks on the EVMs prior to an election, conduct mock polls (these are, by the way, mandatory procedures to be conducted before an election), and then certify them as election-worthy in presence of all officials and representatives of political parties? Again after an election is over, the EVMs are stored in strong rooms with 24-hour heavy security and the strong room itself is sealed with signatures of the concerned political parties and electoral officials. So, we should ask ourselves whether are all these possible? Certainly not. To my understanding, the issue of manipulation of EVMs is just a concoction of conspiracy theorists, especially designed to malign our democratic system and beliefs.
To conclude, we would like to mention about the powers of Election Commission of India (ECI), which is a constitutional body, which is free from all kinds of political interference. The ECI is one of the few constitutional authorities which have the freedom to operate autonomously and has quasi-judicial and administrative powers. It’s immune to any political interference and enjoys this immunity so that it can function without any political pressure. For example, the Chief Election Commissioner can be removed from its office only through two-third majority in the both houses of the parliament or by the President of India, much like through an impeachment process. Under these circumstances, we fail to understand, why the political parties cast doubts on the truthfulness of the EVMs, only when the election results do not go as per their expectations, while they could have very well gone to court, even before the elections if they doubted the integrity of the ECI. Why do they fail to raise questions during the process of holding the elections when each political party who took part in a certain election was also a signatory to the security process of the EVMs and the chain of custody of the EVMs. So, is it not just a false narrative, which is specifically manufactured to raise doubts about these legitimate elections in the minds of unsuspecting and gullible people? Should we let the EVM to bite the dust?
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