EVMs were damaged in 7 polling stations in Macharla constituency including polling station number 202 where local MLA P Ramakrishna allegedly damaged an EVM.
NCP leader Jitendra Awhad wrongly claimed that women in Manipur vandalised the EVMs because they generated 'lotus slips' no matter which button was pressed.
Repolling at 8 polling stations & 4 assembly seats was necessitated amid reports of violence & damage to EVMs. Polling began at 6 am & is scheduled to end at 2 pm.
Electoral reforms non-profit ADR cast doubts over the sanctity of EVMs. But SC virtually dismissed the idea of scrapping them saying trust had to be reposed on ‘somebody’.
Pakistan President Arif Alvi took to social media to lament lack of EVMs in polls which seem to have thrown up hung assembly with Imran Khan backed independents winning most seats.
Requests for ThePrint’s intervention sound like cries of despair from frustrated people who see media as their last resort. As a society, have we become hard of hearing?
Bangladesh used electronic voting machines in six seats in the 11th parliamentary polls; the poll body wanted EVMs in at least 150 of the country’s 300 seats next year.
Islamabad-based think-tank PICSS's new report says Pakistan saw 'pronounced escalation' in violence last year, with 3,413 conflict-related deaths compared to 1,950 in previous year.
Many of you might think I got something so wrong in National Interest pieces written this year. I might disagree! But some deserve a Mea Culpa. I’d deal with the most recent this week.
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.
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.