EC’s test of faith

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EC’s test of faith

Tuesday, 16 April 2019 | Pioneer

EC’s test of faith

With the Opposition reporting EVM malfunctions, the poll panel has to work out some time-consuming correctives’

Our electoral process, which is truly a large scale democratic exercise with a mammoth logistical efficiency, has, however still not been able to settle our anxieties and mistrust of technology with regard to the operation of the electronic voting machine or EVM. So every election season, it lends itself to the propaganda by Opposition parties that huge caches are tampered with and programmed to suit the ruling dispensation. And this has been an unwavering theme ever since EVMs were introduced, being questioned by parties across the spectrum, depending on when the results suited them or not. Ironically, at the receiving end of these charges of malfunctioning today, the BJP at one time raised the loudest protest with its leader GVL Narasimha Rao writing a book titled Democracy at Risk. And then came the insurance in the form of the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT). Yet the scientific fact is since EVMs aren’t connected to the internet and their software is ‘burnt’ into the CPU and cannot be rewritten after manufacture, mass manipulation is impossible. Of course thefts, faulty chips and breakdowns are possible and a paper system is also liable to be exploited by a system that has seen booth captures and ballot box stuffing but even the most scientific rigging can may be swing a five per cent vote. Besides, such blatant vote capture events can no longer happen with a Central security in place and a phased out electoral process. But whenever a malfunctioning is reported, it fuels old anxieties and raises questions afresh.

So it is that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu is rallying other Opposition parties around his demand that at least 50 per cent of the votes be compared with VVPAT slips for the sake of transparency and removing doubts. He alleged that technology was misused during Telangana elections and 25 lakh votes were removed from the electoral rolls. He even claimed that election officials apologised when there was a gap between polled votes and the total number of votes. Besides, all around Andhra Pradesh, the buttons malfunctioned, reportedly registering votes of some parties and not that of others. Around 30 per cent EVMs did not function at all. Similar complaints have poured in from north India, too, during the first phase of polling. So there seem to be some technical glitches that need addressing swiftly and are providing enough ammunition to the Opposition parties to claim a thorough relook at the system and cite examples of Western countries like Germany, which have indeed shifted to ballot papers. So the Election Commission (EC) has been left with the unenviable task of restoring trust in a system, which has snowballed into a loud noise about the EVMs being damaged goods. But the fact is, the EC cannot get more VVPAT machines since the election process is already underway and cross-tabulation, in the end, may lengthen the process of counting and put an attendant stress on the system of tallying the votes. It is not just about the infrastructure, you need that much more manpower for the magnitude of polling increases progressively as lakhs of people come to vote at every other polling station. It is impossible to tackle this rush with paper ballots. It is precisely for this reason that the EVMs were brought into our electoral process to streamline operations and reduce costs. Now with both technological and manual systems in play, the process is quite complicated as it exists. And although the EC has tried taking every party into confidence about EVMs, which it claims has been tested and certified by IITs’ best minds, it now has to face the parties’ plea of counting of at least 50 per cent of the VVPAT slips with the EVMs in every Assembly segment. And so the onus of restoring the credibility of the democratic exercise has now been thrust upon the EC. Question is do we go back to a retrograde system and risk further ills? In the short-term, what can the EC, therefore, do to restore faith? It can increase some numbers of EVM machines connected to VVPATs and ensure the latter doesn’t break down too. It must use more authentication units before the polls to weed out counterfeit/tampered EVMs, progress on which has been slow. It can fix a uniform sample size for hand-counting VVPAT slips for all constituencies. And it should fix a margin of error before ordering an automatic recount. It may be time-taking but will ensure its credibility among voters at least. And convince that EVM is not the devil.

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