How foolproof are EVMs?

Wild charges were aired about India’s EVMs by a conspiracy theorist at a London press conference, but judging by the quality of the charges levelled — not just about EVMs but also alleged political murders, etc — the credibility of the event is in question. A charge was made about tampering with EVMs in 2014 by the use of unspecified low frequency signals in a conspiracy by a private organisation and the BJP, at a time when the UPA was in power, but unless there is some solid proof to substantiate any of the charges, there is little need to give it any importance. A bamboozling theory about the electronic tampering of unique stand-alone machines will not suffice for us to get too serious the wild accusations.

There is, however, a genuine need to allay fears on the working of EVMs, that when shown as malfunctioning have tended to favour a certain national party and its symbol. The VVPAT paper trail should go some way to assuaging these doubts, but there is a need to re-examine the election voting mechanism if there are sufficient grounds to suspect democracy can be undermined in any way. The United States and many European countries have given up on EVMs, but these were put online and so easily hacked into. India has built a stronger EVM ecosystem, but it should still be tested rigorously if we are to convince people that it cannot be used to subvert democracy. The point is that three decades were spent in evolving this system, but that alone shouldn’t stop us from keeping an open mind on the subject.