Don’t blame it on the voting machines

Don’t blame it on the voting machines

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal have attributed their rout in the assembly elections to alleged hanky-panky with electronic voting machines (EVMs). Both cite individual polling booths where the votes they got fell far below a realistically assured threshold. This does not carry conviction. India’s EVMs are not networked but are millions of stand-alone pieces of equipment. Had they been networked, hacking is a definite possibility, if not by a domestic political party then by a foreign power that wants to discredit India’s democracy. But as former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi says, the Election Commission must satisfy public opinion beyond the shadow of doubt about the authenticity of the elections it conducts.
No party is assigned a common position across EVMs for the button the voter has to press to register her vote in favour of her nominee. The list of candidates is finalised constituency-wise only after the last day for withdrawal of nominations, depending on the candidate’s name, where a party’s button would figure on the EVM is determined.
In this period, the voting machines are already in the custody of the Election Commission. Before actual polling begins, the polling officer demonstrates that the EVM works as intended before the polling agents of the candidates.
If a machine malfunctions, it would be spotted then. In theory, it is possible to plant a dormant piece of malware in a Bluetooth enabled EVM that is remotely activated to register most votes for a particular candidate, or to bias automated tallying. But the actual vote-count belies any such possibility. BSP, for example, secured a total vote-count in 2017 that is higher than its tally in 2014.
The Election Commission has already given an undertaking to the Supreme Court, following its order in 2012 on a petition filed by Subramanian Swamy and others, to create a voter-verified paper audit trail, by attaching additional kit to the EVMs, by 2019. It just needs to make good on its promise, in time for the next round of assembly polls. That would eliminate all room for distrust.