Most political analysts have dismissed those who question EVMs. But why do these machines keep failing at the booth?
When many Western election observers come to India, they get astounded by the sheer scale of any major Indian election. In fact, elections to the municipalities of some large Indian cities are larger in scale than the general elections in many smaller countries and even larger ones like Australia. It was for this very reason that the Election Commission of India moved the country away from the tedious, time-consuming and expensive system of paper ballots to Electronic Voting Machines from 1999 onward for Central, State and occasionally local body elections. One of the basic premises of EVMs was not just the fact that they were easier to use but also that they were tamper-free. Those born after the turn of the millennium, after the introduction of the EVM, would not be aware how corrupt Indian elections had become with muscle-power and booth capturing becoming de rigueur in many parts of the rural hinterland.
But it is the very march of technology itself that made people question the EVMs. And while none of the charges about EVMs being tampered have been proven — in fact those attacking EVMs have often been sore losers — the fact is that the rate of EVM failure should ring alarm bells. The ECI has maintained that it is only the newer EVMs that have the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) printer system attached that are failing, and they should be trusted, but any failure leads to immense speculation that EVMs have been ‘tampered’. That EVMs are more secure than paper ballots, and a single machine as of today can only store 3,840 votes, is the main argument against tampering. Given the scale of elections with many State legislative seats having millions of voters, tampering will need to be done in a scientific and methodical manner. However, modern data analytical systems can inform a person who wants to hack the system where to manipulate the machines for maximum gain. Also, while there is no proven hack into EVMs, can modern over-the-air technologies be used to create a backdoor into EVMs whether by a political party in India or a foreign power? Even the most secure systems in the world, including those of financial services firms, can be compromised, sometimes deliberately by malicious forces or intelligence agencies. And many times it is only a whistleblower or through a fortuitous discovery that these backdoors are revealed even if the existence of such backdoors is often denied. Some have argued that the ECI should make the source code for EVMs public but that will perversely allow a person with malicious intent to discover weaknesses in the system which one could sell to the highest bidder because one should never assume that humans are altruistic. Most people are selfish and self-serving because that is how we have been wired. That said, the public at large continues to trust EVMs in India and elsewhere. Without this trust, Indian democracy will be in peril. But distrust can grow when the machines fail. Given the scale of Indian elections, some failures will be par for the course. The ECI should do its utmost to keep malfunctioning machines to a bare minimum.
