How India revolutionized its voting system through Electronic Voting Machines
By: Shreyanshi Dubey
Tags: Politics And Elections, Elections, Technology, Technical Analysis, Voting

Innovations in technology have rapidly transformed democracies in the last two decades. One area where digital technology’s relevance and impact has often been debated is the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in the choice of political leaders. Compared to a pencil-and-paper system, technology has tremendous potential to empower citizens, amplify their voices, and allow citizens to hold governments accountable.

The Design and Make of EVMs

First conceived in 1977 in the Election Commission of India, the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. (ECIL), Hyderabad was assigned the task to design and develop it. In 1979 a prototype was developed, which was demonstrated by the Election Commission before the representatives of political parties on 6th August, 1980. The Bharat Electronic Ltd. (BEL), Bangalore, another public-sector undertaking, was co-opted along with ECIL to manufacture EVMs once a broad consensus was reached on its introduction.

An EVM is designed with two units: the control unit and the balloting unit. These units are joined together by a cable. The control unit of the EVM is kept with the presiding officer or the polling officer. The balloting unit is kept within the voting compartment for electors to cast their votes. This is done to ensure that the polling officer verifies your identity. With the EVM, instead of issuing a ballot paper, the polling officer will press the Ballot Button which enables the voter to cast their vote. A list of candidates names and/or symbols will be available on the machine with a blue button next to it. The voter can press the button next to the candidate’s name they wish to vote for.

Political fate of the machine

First time use of EVMs occurred in the general election in Kerala in May, 1982; however, the absence of a specific law prescribing its use led to the Supreme Court striking down that election. Subsequently, in 1989, the Parliament amended the Representation of the People Act, 1951 to create a provision for the use of EVMs in the elections (chapter 3). A general consensus on its introduction could be reached only in 1998 and these were used in 25 Legislative Assembly constituencies spread across three states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi. Its use was further expanded in 1999 to 45 Parliamentary Constituencies and later, in February 2000, to 45 Assembly Constituencies of the Haryana Assembly elections. In the State Assembly elections, held in May 2001, in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry and West Bengal, the EVMs were used in all the Assembly Constituencies. Since then, for every State Assembly election, the Commission has used the EVMs. In 2004, the General Election to the Lok Sabha, the EVMs (more than one million) were used in all 543 Parliamentary Constituencies in the country.

It runs on a power pack (Battery) having 7.5 volts. In case of M3 EVM, power packs are inserted in 5th, 9th, 13th, 17th & 21st Balloting Units, if more than 4 BUs are connected to a Control Unit. On the right side of the BU along the candidates’ vote button, digits 1 to 16 are embossed in Braille signage for guidance of visually impaired electors.

In a meeting of all political parties held on 4th October, 2010, the parties expressed satisfaction with the EVM but some parties requested the Commission to consider introducing Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail for further transparency and verifiability in poll process.The Government of India notified the amended Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 on 14th August, 2013, enabling the Commission to use VVPAT with EVMs. The Commission used VVPAT with EVMs first time in bye-election from 51-Noksen (ST) Assembly Constituency of Nagaland. Thereafter, VVPATs have been used in selected constituencies in every election to Legislative Assemblies and 8 Parliamentary Constituencies in General Election to the House of the People-2014.

Critical analysis and credibility of EVMs

The efficiency and quick turnaround time observed with EVMs become particularly crucial when they are used for larger populations. The scale of the recently held general election in India bears testimony to how EVM technology addresses electoral fraud and simplify the electoral procedure. The election witnessed a historic 67 percent voter turnout from nearly 900 million registered voters across 542 parliamentary constituencies. For a democracy of this size with a complex multi-party system, electoral fraud is naturally a leading concern. But the use of EVMs in India’s electoral procedure over the years has given its voters confidence that their vote makes a meaningful difference to election results and democratic governance.

Indian voting machines must be designed to function under more challenging environmental conditions and operational constraints than other electronic voting systems. These requirements have influenced the simple design of the current machines and impact our security analysis.

Among the challenges are:

Cost With well over a million EVMs in use, the cost of the system is a major concern. The current EVMs are built from inexpensive commodity parts and cost approximately $200 for each set of units, far less than many DREs used in the U.S., which cost several thousand dollars. Power Many polling places are located in areas that lack electricity service or have only intermittent service. Thus, the EVMs operate entirely from battery power, rather than merely using a battery as a backup.

Natural Hazards India’s varied climate has great extremes of temperature, as well as other environmental hazards such as dust and pollution. EVMs must be operated under these adverse conditions and must be stored for long periods in facilities that lack climate control.

An Election Commission report cites further dangers from “attack by vermin, rats, fungus or due to mechanical danger, [that might cause] malfunction”.

Illiteracy: Though many Indian voters are well educated, many others are illiterate. The country’s literacy rate in 2007 was 66%, and only about 55% among women, so handling illiterate voters must be the rule rather than the exception. Thus, ballots feature graphical party symbols as well as candidate names, and the machines are designed to be used without written instructions.

Unfamiliarity with Technology Some voters in India have very little experience with technology and may be intimidated by electronic voting. For example, “Fifty-year-old Hasulal Topno [… an] impoverished Oraon tribal, who gathers firewood from the forest outlying the Palamau Tiger Reserve, a Maoist hotbed 35 km from Daltonganj town” told a reporter, “I am scared of the voting machine,” prior to its introduction in his village. Nirmal Ho, “a tribal and a marginal farmhand in the Chatarpur block of Palamau district,” said he was “more scared of the EVMs than the Maoists” on account of his unfamiliarity with technology. To avoid further intimidating voters like these, India’s EVMs require the voter to press only a single button.

Booth Capture: A serious threat against paper voting before the introduction of EVMs was booth capture, a less than-subtle type of electoral fraud found primarily in India, wherein party loyalists would take over a polling station by force and stuff the ballot box. Better policing makes such attacks less of a threat today, but the EVMs have also been designed to discourage them by limiting the rate of vote casting to five per minute. Any voting system proposed for use in India must be able to function under these constraints.

In recent years there have been numerous allegations and press reports of election irregularities involving Indian EVMs. It is difficult to assess the credibility of these charges, since there has apparently never been a prosecution related to EVM fraud, and there has never been a post-election audit to attempt to understand the causes. Nevertheless, they paint a troubling picture of election security in India. Reports of malfunctions have been extensively surveyed by Rao. For instance, he relates that in the 2009 parliamentary election there were reported EVM malfunctions in more than 15 parliamentary constituencies across the country. Especially troubling are claims that when the voter pressed a button for one candidate, a light would flash for another, which could be explained by a simple attack on the EVM cable. Rao also relates reports from prominent politicians that engineers approached them in 2009 offering to fix elections through this method. Despite these incidents, experts for the Election Commission have equated any questioning of the security of the EVMs with an attack on the commission’s own impartiality and integrity. In a television interview, P.V. Indiresan, who chaired the Election Commission’s 2006 technical review, went as far as to liken doubting the security of the EVMs to “asking Sita to prove her virginity [sic] by having Agni pariksha [trial by fire]” (a reference to a famous episode in the Ramayana).