Despite hue and cry, EVMs still best way

Several political leaders, including AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal and BSP’s Mayawati, have complained after the recent state elections that the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were rigged. The Election Commission has emphatically denied that the EVMs were programmed to favour any party. It’s a fact many parties have voiced reservations at different times against EVMs, when the result wasn’t in their favour. This may sound like sour grapes, but their misgivings shouldn’t be dismissed offhand, even if the EC has been operating EVMs since 1982 on an experimental basis and since 2004 all Lok Sabha polls have only been run on EVMs, with a few exceptions. The varied nature of results since then has led everyone to believe Indian democracy has a “champion” in its EVMs, that make elections easy to run and considerably simplifies counting in a nation with around 81.5 crore eligible voters in a parliamentary election.

No politician pointing his fingers at EVMs has ever had concrete proof to demonstrate that the machines were programmed to tilt the popular vote. Of course, the argument over EVMs’ infallibility can seem ludicrous on occasion, as in a recent BMC poll in Mumbai when one candidate got zero votes even though, at least, he voted for himself. Most charges have, however, been vague, and based on assumptions like votes not matching the presumed communal preferences of voters as in Uttar Pradesh. But it would be ridiculous to suggest that voting is fine in some states and not in others, although anyone attempting to rig multi-state elections would presumably be intelligent enough to be selective. The point, however, is that only the EC controls the EVMs, and voting can be rigged if EVMs are administratively fiddled with, but to do which the EC should be “compromised”. There is no reason to believe the EC’s autonomous nature has been breached in this manner.

The arguments in favour of Indian EVMs in contrast to foreign ones are that our machines are stand-alones, and the system isn’t network-based and running on operating systems as they are abroad, which can be easily manipulated. “The software in the EVM chip is one-time programmable and is burnt into the chip at the time of manufacture. Nothing can be written on the chip after manufacture,” the EC noted when EVMs were under fire. Still, the EC should run tests to establish that the Indian system is by far the world’s best. In any case, the EC has promised the VVPAT system will be ready by the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, in which a voter gets a printout slip of his/her vote on the spot, which is to be deposited in the ballot box. Once the paper trail backs up electronic voting, no one would have reason even to believe Indian elections can be rigged.

The arguments in favour of Indian EVMs in contrast to foreign ones are that our machines are stand-alones, which aren’t network-based or running on operating systems as they are abroad.