A lot has been said about the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used in India, most recently by those who lost in the recent Assemble elections. While it is the finally the duty of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to dispel these rumours relating to EVMs being manipulated or ‘hacked’, let us take a look at whether they can be taken seriously or not.
Why EVMs in the first place?
The core advantage of EVMs over the traditional ballot paper system is portability, reduced costs and faster counting. In simple terms, the ECI no longer has to maintain a printing press to print the ballot papers, transport them to the polling booths and then carry the sealed ballot boxes to the counting centre, where they are to be counted. This is the exact same reason why transport bodies have moved from issuing punched tickets to printing them using a machine.
In the case of transport, under the earlier system, tickets of different denominations had to be printed, carried across several districts, and after being issued, the conductor would have to manually count the number of tickets sold and enter them on to a trip sheet. In the case of elections, the same applies, except instead of accounting for number of tickets sold, the number of votes per party has to be counted. This gives rise to two possible issues: 1. Human error, where the counting agent might accidentally mark a vote against the wrong party. 2. Malicious intent, where a counting agent either paid by a party or candidate or sympathetic towards a party might mark a vote against the wrong party. The sole purpose of EVMs is to make life easier for those involved in conducting the election process, thus making it cheaper and faster for the ECI.
Introducing the Electronic Voting Machine
Data from the ECI website on the functioning of EVMs answers the basic questions. The EVMs that India uses are jointly manufactured by Bengaluru-based Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Hyderabad-based Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL). A patent was issued to Gadde Raja Koteswara Rao of ECIL in 2001 for the invention.
The basic design of the EVM is simple. It operates using a six volt alkaline battery making it operable in places where there is no power. It can record 3,840 votes, far greater than the maximum number of electors at a polling station which is normally 1,500. A single EVM can support up to 16 candidates and a total of four such EVMs can be connected to each other to support a maximum of 64 candidates per constituency.
The EVM consists of two separate units, A Balloting Unit (BU) and a Control Unit (CU) that are connected by a five metre-long cable. Once a voter casts his/her vote using the BU, it is stored in the CU, thus ensuring that even if there is a malfunction, the BU can be replaced with a new one. An electoral officer covering 10 polling stations carries spare EVMs in such a scenario. The CU’s main purpose is to turn on the BU so that a voter has cast his/her vote. Once the vote has been cast, it is automatically deactivated till the next voter is verified against the electoral rolls and the officer-in-charge activates it again.
Can EVMs be hacked?
Now, the main point. No, an EVM cannot be hacked, or manipulated the way most of the losing politicians have claimed. For any device to be hacked, there has to be a connection between the hacker’s device and the device to be hacked. In the case of EVMs, the only connection is the cable connecting the BU and the CU, nothing else. There is no connection between the CU and the outside world as well, till it enters the counting centre. The BBC report from 2010 claiming that an American scientist ‘hacked’ into an EVM clearly states that the ‘scientists’ changed the components of the device and then manipulated it. While the report itself manipulated facts, it is clear that the device that was ‘hacked’ was not a standard ECIL or BEL developed EVM used by the ECI.
So how can we say the EVMs are secure?
The answer is simple. The only way an EVM can be tampered with is by physically opening it up and reprogramming it.
Further, the allegation made against them is: pressing any button would transfer all the votes to one candidate. The order of the candidates is randomly selected after the last date of filing and withdrawing nominations. Further, the EVMs are checked if they are working fine, in the presence of the candidate or their representatives and only after they are satisfied, they are sealed. This makes them virtually tamper-proof.
Enter the VVPAT system
In order to make the process more reassuring, the ECI introduced the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system in select constituencies starting with the 2014 general elections. Under the VVPAT, once the voter presses a button, the candidate’s name is printed on a slip of paper, shown to the voter and then dropped into the box below. It functions as a secondary step to allow the voter to know that they voted for the right candidate and then goes out of view.
ECI explainer on VVPAT:
Under the erstwhile paper ballot system, manipulating was far easier that it is with an EVM. Besides, the first major elections that used the EVM, the 2004 General Elections saw the incumbent Vajpayee government lose, making it quite clear that the system is far better than it is given credit for. Most political parties’ claim, today, that all the votes went to the BJP would be foolish given the outcome of elections in Tamil Nadu, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and the National Capital Territory of Delhi that were held in the last two years. Further, given what happened in Jharkhand in 2005, it is again foolish to assume that the current opposition parties aren’t innocent of such crimes.
Moral of the story: The next time any politician says ‘EVMs are tampered with, or hacked’, simply remember the folktale about the fox which couldn’t reach the grapes and then went away claiming that they were sour anyway.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.