'Election With EVM Is Not Fair Unless...'

'We accept EVMs cannot be hacked because it is not connected, but can they be manipulated? Are you allowing us to check if EVMs can be manipulated?'

IMAGE: An electoral official shows the EVM to party representatives at the counting centre in Akola, November 23, 2024. Photograph: ANI Photo

The controversy over Electronic Voting Machines refuses to die ever since the Congress alleged vote tampering in the Maharashtra assembly elections behind its humiliating defeat at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party and allies.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sanjay Raut, a Congress ally, is unable to buy into the election results till date, and blames the EVM for the Maha Vikas Aghadi's defeat.

The BJP led Mahayuti won 230 out of 288 seats in Maharashtra, routing the Opposition.

This week the Supreme Court rejected a petition by evangelist K A Paul who sought a return to paper ballots.

Justice Vikram Nath orally remarked during the hearing, 'EVMs are fine if you win and tampered if you lose.'

Interestingly, the BJP blamed EVMs for its unexpected defeat in the 2004 general elections; the Congress did likewise in 2014.

Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com spoke to computer scientistMadhav Deshpande an expert on EVMs, to find out if the apprehensions over EVMs are justified.

IMAGE: EVMs and VVPATs in a storage room ahead of the counting of votes for the Maharashtra assembly elections at a polling counting centre in Akola, November 23, 2024. Photograph: ANI Photo

Why does the EVM controversy refuse to die down?

The most important reason is the lack of transparency in the entire process about the EVM's 'junctions'.

The buck stops with the Election Commission of India and the judiciary. There is very little technical detail available and in spite of asking very specific questions, those details are not provided by the ECI.

When you have something shrouded in mystery there will always be a lot of guesswork around whatever is happening.

In addition to that, things have been murkier because the number of votes (vote count) keeps on changing after voting has stopped.

Every time the Election Commission comes up with some excuse or the other. If an electronic device is closed or sealed, there is no way even one vote can be added or subtracted because the device is sealed.

IMAGE: An electoral officer demonstrates the functioning of EVMs and VVPATs to polling officials during a training programme for the Maharashtra assembly elections at Dadar, north central Mumbai, November 12, 2024. Photograph: ANI Photo

The Opposition is accusing the ECI of increasing the vote percentage after voting day as it happened in the Haryana and Maharashtra assembly elections. Is this something new or did this happen earlier too?

Earlier we used to count the number of votes that was cast. Now they are giving the percentage of votes, which itself is obfuscation of data.

I will give you the example of, say, one polling booth.

Let us say in booth 'A' there are 1,200 voters. And let us say by 11 am 340 voters have voted in the booth. Now every two hours the election officer of that booth has to upload the percentage of voters voting in that booth via the ECI's Encore app. This app connects the mobile phone of that officer to the ECI Web server.

Now let us go back to booth 'A' and take the percentage of 340 vis a vis 1,200 voters of that booth. Now if that election officer does not do proper math and takes a base of 1,000 voters instead of 1,200 voters, the percentage of voting at 11 am for that booth will come to 34 percent.

This is humanly possible because there is no standard operating procedure on the ECI Web site.

I have raised this question in my RTI (Right to Information) plea but have not got any response yet.

Now when you do not have any standard operation procedure, the polling officer of that booth can follow whatever his mind tells him/her at that point of time.

If s/he took 34 percent of voting of 1,000 voters the result would be 340 votes but in actual 34 percent voting for that booth should be 351 votes. So, 11 votes have got added in that polling booth even though those votes have not been cast.

In a similar manner if there are 100 voting booths in the assembly constituency and every polling officer is doing rounding off percentage of votes, then you have added 1,100 votes which were actually not cast.

This is obfuscation. You are creating an error where none was due.

Vote is data and data is acquired from the EVM. And EVM is the machine which only gives you the count and not the percentage because EVM is not aware of the percentage.

The primary rule of data science is to capture the data at its source in the form which is available. Now, the source is the EVM machine which is giving you the number, so what is the point in changing that and making it in percentage terms of voter turnout?

In 2017 the Election Commission called for a hackathon challenge and dared anyone to hack the EVMs. Why did no one prove them wrong then?

There are two responses.

Firstly, if nobody found fault in 2017 that does not mean that no one must find a flaw now. This argument does not hold because life is about learning and discovering things.

Secondly, if you look at the test it was not made available to me. This (hackathon challenge) was available only to political parties and I am not associated with any political party nor am I their representative. The common man could not participate in this hackathon.

Did you try to participate in it but could not do so?

I don't want to make it 'me' oriented but the hackathon was not allowed for individual citizens of India to participate in by the ECI.

Secondly, nobody was allowed to touch the EVM for the number of key process that they had proposed. And if my memory serves me right, seven minutes was the time given for this hackathon challenge.

You could not also open the machine to see. You were supposed to do things as the ECI prescribed.

This is not the way testing takes place. If you are buying a car and the car showroom guy tells you to test drive but then puts a condition that you cannot start by reversing the car first. If he tells you that you have to put it in first gear and move ahead and not to reverse the car as the first step. Obviously you will not buy that car because a car manufacturer cannot give instructions that buyers should not ask questions about the car.

At the best what would have happened in the 2017 hackathon was that some EVMs would have got damaged but nothing more.

After 2017 the ECI never threw a challenge to hack the EVM?

No, they never opened that challenge to anyone. Okay, we accept EVMs cannot be hacked because it is not connected.

But can EVMs be manipulated? Are you allowing us to check if EVMs can be manipulated? There will always be a doubt.

The Supreme Court says political parties denounce EVMs when they lose elections but not when they win.

Unfortunately common citizens like us are told that they will not entertain anything about EVMs for reasons best known to them. It is a very unfair stance to take.

If the Supreme Court is saying this, what do you do?

You may have discussed an issue ten times and if the 11th time somebody comes and raises three basic different set of questions he has to be welcomed with his questions as the Supreme Court is the last resort where every Indian can approach to seek a fair hearing and judgment.

Now if the Supreme Court says we are not going to hear anything where do you go? The only recourse then is to return to the ballot box for which there has to be a movement on the road. People will come to the streets for agitation and go back to the bullock cart age (of voting).

This is sad because I always say that if you have a car and it is not functioning you don&'t go back to the bullock cart. You either repair the car or buy a new car.

IMAGE: Counting of votes for the Maharashtra assembly elections at a polling counting centre in Akola, November 23, 2024. Photograph: ANI Photo

Do you believe the Maharashtra elections were free and fair?

I do not believe any election with EVM will be absolutely free and fair unless the entire EVM process is made transparent -- and transparent in all senses to the public at large, whose the fundamental right to vote is exercised through this mode.

How to make it so?

It is very simple.

First and foremost, going back to ballot papers is not the solution and is a futile and not a progressive argument. The correct solution is to make EVMs fool-proof and manipulation-proof.

Let's understand -- voting is electronic now. Vote is the data and data is generated in the ballot unit. It goes to the control unit from the ballot unit and it travels back to the control unit via the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trial (VVPAT).

The data stops are ballot unit creates it, control unit receives it, which it then sends to VVPAT. VVPAT receives it and sends it back to the control unit. And the control unit receives it again.

At each stop the rolling checksum of the data on the device should be maintained. Checksum is an alphanumeric string generated by a mathematical formula based on the data that is coming in. This is a universally accepted method to detect if data has remain unchanged since its source/generation.

A checksum should be maintained by the ballot unit when it sends the vote to the control unit by the control unit when it receives the vote, by VVPAT when it receives the vote from control unit, and lastly it should again be maintained by the control unit when it receives the vote back from the VVPAT.

It should be demonstrable that all the checksums are the same -- and this is the absolute cornerstone of the solution. If you do that, then you are establishing what you call data integrity.

It means whatever button was pressed, the same data travelled right up to the time control unit finally saved it. Only then there will be total transparency and people will not complain that the machine is at fault.

Today, that is not done.

IMAGE: An electoral officer demonstrates the functioning of EVMs and VVPATs to polling officials during a training programme for the Maharashtra assembly elections at Dadar, north central Mumbai, November 12, 2024. Photograph: ANI Photo

Actor Swara Bhasker has alleged that wherever EVMs were charged 99 percent the BJP has won the election. What does this mean?

I refrain from commenting on battery arguments. But since you asked me this question I am answering.

You know that if any battery is used for 10 to 12 hours it will drain depending on the size and load on the battery. If you charge your phone and not use it, then the battery can last for seven days but if you use your phone heavily it may last for 7 to 8 hours only.

Similarly, the argument here is if the EVM's battery is used for more time they would show less charge. And when it is said that 99 percent of battery is shown, it is indirectly stating that the EVMs were changed during the counting of votes. I consider it circumstantial evidence at best.

Also, this is digressing and distracting from the important technical questions such as data audit trail that need to be raised and answered.