EVMs or Electronic Voting Machines are a favourite topic in the Indian media. Here is my take, submitted with a great deal of humility and sobriety.
Despite my Uriah Heep-esque claims to ostentatious humility, I believe it is important to blow one’s own trumpet a little bit, if for no other reason than to establish credibility. I have run an IT company, been the chairperson of NASSCOM, testified before a US Congressional Committee on Internet-related issues, and was one of the founders of the Data Security Council of India.
It is my contention that EVMs are a great technological achievement of our country, in the same league as Aadhaar, UPI, national FASTag, and early market settlements. We should be very proud of EVMs rather than dissing them from positions of ignorance and vested interest, which makes no sense at all.
The EVM is a product of India’s much-maligned public sector. Does anybody remember the automation of railway reservations before the three-tier architecture, let alone the cloud, came into existence? The fact of the matter is that our country has demonstrated unusual sources of creativity. In the early 1950s, many super-intelligent observers from among our erstwhile imperial masters argued that a largely illiterate India was making a mistake by introducing adult franchise. Our first Election Commissioner, Sukumar Sen, and his colleagues produced some absolutely original innovations like electoral symbols and indelible ink. These ideas have now been borrowed by other countries.
Also read: EVM debate has a solution. And it’s neither the ballot paper nor INDIA’s new demand
What’s not to like about EVM
Whoever invented the EVM was a genius, primarily for what they did not do. Each EVM is a separate unit, completely unconnected to any other device or the broader telecommunication system. I believe it has no communication software that is TCP/IP-compatible or browser-based. This means that no one can access the machine using the Internet or any other external communication. The EVM is a very simple machine that records, adds, and tallies votes. Therefore, there is hardly any software inside it. And we all know that if you really want to introduce malware or a Trojan, you need thousands of lines of code to hide your mischief. On top of all this, because of its simplicity, the EVM is extremely rugged. It works in snowy territories, deserts, and places with unreliable power supply and hot, humid conditions without air conditioning. This is an additional marvel. Once again, Indians have proved our jugaad in ruggedising devices to suit our tough terrain.
Frankly, there was no need for sample verification with the VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) process. The Election Commission reluctantly agreed to it to stave off vociferous ignoramuses. The performance of sample VVPAT verification, with the errors being either non-existent or asymptotically zero, should put all doubts to rest. To ask for 100 per cent verification would involve unnecessary expenses shouldered by the already burdened Indian taxpayer.
In the digital sphere, we have moved ahead of the rest of the world. Do we want to imitate the weaknesses of American states like Pennsylvania and Florida? Do we want to become like Rochdale in Britain, where a tsunami of unidentified postal votes decides the election? I submit that we should imitate the strengths of these countries, not their weaknesses. Should we not mildly (not loudly) congratulate ourselves on getting better and better in our gigantic electoral process? Electoral symbols, indelible ink, and now EVMs? The choice is ours whether we want to be a nation of destructive critics or people who justly praise where praise is due.
Jaithirth Rao is an entrepreneur and an investor. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Jayraj Bachchhav)
The circuitry of EVM machine must be so simple that even a 2nd year digital electronics undergraduate/diploma student can design it. There is no software or even microprocessor needed to design it. The operations and functions that are required for polling is just of recording and counting votes of each buttons. So it is just a digital register: a very dumb and primitive version of digital storage. A digital register with a very primitive adding function. And all of it must be hardwired. There must absolutely no software in it. It is as dumb as the AC remote with a counter register/counter.
EVM is non-programmable hardwired machine. For comparison, even a very basic 1980s hand calculator or Rs 50 Chinese digital watch must have 1000 times more complex digital circuitry than an EVM. Even an expensive battery based Chinese toy has more complex circuitry than an EVM. Its simplicity is its biggest strength.
But, the real problem lies in the trust of designer and manufacturer of this machine. Do they still following the same basic circuit design? Are they not adding any unnecessary functions in it? Are they increasing its complexity even if it is still non-programmable and hardwired? I believe there is a lack of transparency in the the whole process. Election Commission must make the circuit design public and have multiple independent engineers audit the whole manufacturing process or EVMs itself to ensure that it has the same design in the final product that is made public.
The real lack of fairness of Election Commision in the overall election process has also greatly contributed in maligning this very basic and innocent piece of hardware.
Author says since there is hardly any software in EVMs, there is no possibility of hiding a malware or a Trojan. But since Election Commission refuses to share the software, there is no need to hide a malware in any case! On another track, the software can be made even simpler. Let the EVM system be blind to candidates and party symbols.. Let the machine simply give button-wise counts of votes which can be manually mapped to candidates as per the labels pasted on the EVM ballot unit before polling begins. Then there will simply be no question of any hanky panky.