ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES: Civil Services Mentor Magazine: April - 2017

::ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES::

Free and fair elections are central to the democratic ethos of any country. This includes fair, accurate, and transparent electoral process with outcomes that can be independently verified. Conventional voting accomplishes many of these goals. However, electoral malpractices like bogus voting and booth capturing pose a serious threat to spirit of electoral democracy. It has, thus, been the endeavour of the Election Commission of India to make reforms in the electoral process to ensure free and fair elections. EVMs, devised and designed by Election Commission of India in collaboration with two Public Sector undertakings viz., Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore and Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad, is a major step in this direction.

Electronic Voting Machines ("EVM") are being used in Indian General and State Elections to implement electronic voting in part from 1999 elections and in total since 2004 elections. The EVMs reduce the time in both casting a vote and ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES declaring the results compared to the old paper ballot system. Bogus voting and booth capturing can be greatly reduced by the use of EVMs. Illiterate people find EVMs easier than ballot paper system. They are easier to transport the EVMs compared to ballot boxes.

EVM has become the leitmotif of the world's largest democratic exercise and gets smarter with each avatar. Here is an attempt to briefly trace the evolution of the EVM and its use in the world's largest democracy.

EVMs were first used in 50 polling stations of Parur Assembly Constituency of Kerala in May 1982. These machines could not be used after 1983 after a Supreme Court ruling that necessitated legal backing for the use of Voting machines in elections. The law was amended by Parliament in December, 1988 and a new section 61A was inserted in the Representation of the People Act, 1951 empowering the Commission to use voting machines. On 24th March, 1992, necessary amendment to the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 was notified by the Government in the Ministry of Law and Justice. An Expert Committee was constituted by the Govt. of India which concluded that these machines are temper proof. Since, November 1998, EVMs have

been using in each and every general/ bye elections to Parliamentary and Assembly Constituency. India turned into an e-democracy in General Elections 2004 when EVMs were used across all polling Stations in the country. Since then, all elections were conducted by EVMs .

Program which controls the functioning of the control unit is burnt into a micro chip on a "one time programmable basis". Once burnt it cannot be read, copied out or altered. It Eliminates the possibility of invalid votes, makes the counting process faster and reduces the cost of printing. An EVM can be used in areas without electricity as it runs on alkaline batteries. Elections can be conducted through EVMs if the number of candidates does not exceed 64. An EVM can record a maximum number of 3840 votes.

There are various benefitswhich are derived from the use of electronic voting machines to the paper ballot. Some of these important benefits are given below:

EVMs, devised and designed by ECI in collaboration with two PSUs viz., Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad
EVMs reduce the time in both casting a vote and declaring the results compared to the old paper ballot system. Bogus voting and booth capturing can be greatly reduced by the use of EVMs. Illiterate people find EVMs easier than ballot paper system.
They are easier to transport the EVMs compared to ballot boxes.
It is tamper proof & simple to perate

There is recent debate about EVM's are not tamper proof to which election commission have clarified the level of protections which are to all the EVMs. M3 EVM produced after 2013 have additional features like Tamper Detection and Self Diagnostics. The tamper detection feature makes an EVM inoperative the moment anyone tries to open the machine. The Self diagnostic feature checks the EVM fully every time it is switched on. Any change in its hardware or software will be detected. The ECI-EVMs use some of the most sophisticated technological features like one time programmable microcontrollers, dynamic coding of key codes, date and time stamping of each and every key press, advanced encryption technology and EVM-tracking software to handle EVM logistics, among others to make the machine 100% tamper proof. In addition to these, new model M3 EVMs also have tamper detection and self-diagnostics as added features. Since, software is based on OTP the program cannot be altered, re-written or Re-read. Thus, making EVM tamper proof. If anyone make, attempt, the machine will become in operative. India do not use any EVMs produced abroad. EVMs are produced

indigenously by 2 PSUs viz. Bharat Electronics Ltd., Bengaluru and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd., Hyderabad. The Software Programme Code is written in-house, by these two companies, not outsourced, and subjected to security procedures at factory level to maintain the highest levels of integrity. The programme is converted into machine code and only then given to the chip manufacturer abroad because we don't have the capability of producing semiconductor microchips within the country.

Every microchip has an identification number embedded into memory and the producers have their digital signatures on them. So, the question of their replacement does not arise at all because microchips are subjected to functional tests with regard to the software. Any attempt to replace microchip is detectable and can make EVM in-operative. Thus, both changing existing programme or introducing new one are detectable making EVM in-operative.

Some countries have experimented with electronic voting in the past. The problem faced with the machines in these countries was that they were computer controlledand connected to the network, which in turn, made them prone to hacking and hence totally defeating the purpose. Moreover, there were not adequate security measures and safeguards in their corresponding laws regulations for security, safety and protection. In some countries,

Courts struck down the use of EVMs on these legal grounds only.

Indian EVM is stand-alone whereas, USA, The Netherlands, Ireland & Germany had direct recording machines. India has introduced paper audit trail, though partly. Others did not have audit trail. Source code is closed during polling in all of the above countries. India also has closed source burnt into memory and is OTP. ECI-EVMs, on the other hand, are stand-alone devices not connected to any network, thus making it impossible for anyone to tamper with over 1.4 million machines in India individually. EVMs are most suited for India, looking at the country's past poll violence and other electoral malpractices like rigging, booth capturing etc. during the polls.