There is no moving back to paper ballot. The Election Commission must ensure that EVMs are free from accusation
Elections are all about winners and losers and in a multi-party democracy like India, there are usually a large number of losers. Many of those who lose, after putting up a spirited fight, take their loss with some grace. But in our country, it has seemingly become fashionable to blame the instrument, the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) for defeat. One party that even won a super majority in a State has been leading the campaign against EVMs after it failed to establish a base anywhere outside that State. The fact is that every party railing against EVMs has not been able to gather an iota of evidence against the machines, and this includes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which after the 2009 General Election, made silly and unverifiable allegations against the technology. But before anyone defends the machines, most political parties are hoping to garner public support against these because many young Indians have no memory of paper ballots, unless they have used them in civic polls. And even though transportation links have improved from those times, it used to take days before the final results were announced. Then there were the recounts, which used to go on for weeks after counting started. This was before the post-liberalisation population boom came of voting age. The average lok Sabha seat has over 12-15 lakh voters, so even with a two-third turnout, that is a million pieces of paper that need to be verified and counted. Divided over 543 seats, you can imagine how ridiculously long the process will take, which will lead to today’s instant gratification generation demanding answers.
And this is before we even look at how the ballot system has been used and abused across the world and in India back in the dark days of the 1980s. The ballot box was used to disenfranchise many people. If we can talk of Dalit empowerment today, one major reason has been the EVM, which has prevented upper castes using muscle and gun power to run their writ and stuff ballot boxes. In civic polls in several States across India, where the ballot box is still used, television images have displayed how the system is routinely abused and ballot boxes stuffed. If a party stands for the empowerment of the poor and disenfranchised, how can they attack the EVMij The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system has had teething issues and some worry that VVPAT system effectively undermines the ‘secret’ ballot system. These are questions that need to be answered. At the same time, the Election Commission of India (ECI) must regularly invite technology experts to analyse EVMs and explore faults in the system. No system is perfect. After all, a single ‘hackathon’ is not enough. Sore losers will always whine and complain, particularly that the referee was biased, whether in an election or a wrestling match. The problem is that some people might actually start to take them seriously even if the referee is honest. The ECI has to stand up and declare itself cleaner than clean.