Evm is fine vvpat makes it better

Evm is fine vvpat makes it better

Much has been spoken about the electronic voting machine (EVM). In the context of the recent assembly elections, it became the proverbial fall guy for those who can only be termed as sore losers: Mayawati and Arvind Kejriwal discovering ‘tampered’ voting machines as an explanation for their drubbings at the hustings.
The narrative of ‘spooky’ voting machines continued in Madhya Pradesh along the same lines. But the fact of the matter is that EVMs remain the best device by which a voter can make her choice without old bogeys of ballot stuffing and booth capturing.
But making a robust system even more robust can only be a good thing. The government should make funds available for the Election Commission of India to equip itself with about 1.5 million voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines —one each for every voting machine. Seven assemblies go to the polls in 2018: Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh in January, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura in March, Karnataka in May and Mizoram in December.
Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh together have less than 45,000 polling stations. That would call for less than 70,000 voting machines and VVPAT units. If the government put its mind to it, getting thrice many that number of the requisite kit by January next year is a simple enough matter. The money spent would not be much and would be a worthwhile investment, in any case.
It can only be a boost to democracy if the cloud of doubt over the EVM’s reliability is removed, to both reinforce its validity in public perception and to deny sore losers a chance to whine about malfunctioning equipment. Going back to paper ballots is not the answer, instituting a double-check on EVMs using VVPAT is the way to go. Get on with it.