Election Commission of India appears to be more interested in technology than democracy. The latter, they have taken for granted, perhaps abiding by the diktat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that India is the ‘mother of all democracies.’
The ECI is, at present, busy with preparations for the hosting of a global conference on ‘Initiatives in the use of Technology in Elections’ scheduled for January 23-26, 2023. The conference is dedicated to the cause of ‘enhancing voter participation through technology integration.’
While showing excessive obsession with technology, ECI has disregarded the non-compliance to ‘democracy principles’ in EVM voting and counting which is destroying the sanctity of India’s electoral process. These ‘democracy principles’ stipulate that each voter has the knowledge and capacity to verify that his or her vote is cast-as-intended, recorded-as-cast and counted-as-recorded.
ECI is also deliberately ignoring the fact that technology-obsession is morphing India’s democracy from the will of the people to the whim of the machines.
As if to rub it in, ECI has announced its plan for remote voting for domestic migrants saying that it has developed a prototype Multi-Constituency Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM) that can handle multiple constituencies from a single remote polling booth.
ECI has floated a concept note soliciting views from political parties on legal, operational, administrative and technological challenges. It has ignored the electorate with contempt – as if elections are mere games played between political parties with voters having no say at all. This seems to be the EC’s understanding of electoral democracy.
Be that as it may, this is what the ECI press release has to say:
“Migration based disenfranchisement is indeed not an option in the age of technological advancement. The voter turnout in General Elections 2019 was 67.4 % and the Election Commission of India is concerned about the issue of over 30 Crore electors not exercising their franchise and also differential voter turnout in various States/UTs…”
It says that, “With the objective of finding a technological solution which is credible, accessible and acceptable to all stakeholders, the Commission…has now explored the option of using a modified version of the time-tested model of M3 EVMs to enable voting at remote polling stations i.e., polling stations outside home constituency, for domestic migrants.”
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“The migrant voter would thus need not travel back to his/her home district to exercise his/her franchise of voting,” it adds.
This modified form of EVM, the ECI says in the release, can handle up to 72 multiple constituencies from a single remote polling booth.
“The initiative, if implemented, can lead to a social transformation for the migrants and connect with their roots as many times they are reluctant to get themselves enrolled at their place of work for various reasons such as frequently changing residences, not enough social and emotional connect with the issues of area of migration, unwillingness to get their name deleted in electoral roll of their home/native constituencies as they have permanent residence/property etc,” it adds.
All this is fine. But what has the ECI done on the far more important issue of the very integrity and credibility of EVM voting and counting flagged in the May 2, 2022, memorandum addressed to the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners and signed by 112 technical professionals, academicians and former senior civil servants?
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The memorandum raised certain posers and issues that has bearing on the very survival of India as an electoral democracy and sought clarification on the following points.
1. It is common knowledge that EVM voting does not comply with basic and essential requirements of ‘democracy principles’.
In an EVM, a vote is recorded electronically by press of a button. But the voter cannot examine what has been recorded, there is no way to provide a guarantee to a voter that her/his vote is cast as intended, recorded as cast and counted as recorded. It also does not provide provable guarantees against hacking, tampering and spurious vote injections.
Thus, elections must be conducted assuming that the EVMs could possibly be tampered with and results manipulated. How then, can elections conducted with EVMs be democratic and how then, can India continue to be considered an electoral democracy?
2. Design and implementation of ECI-EVMs as well as the results of both software and hardware verification are not public and open to independent review.
The VVPAT system does not allow the voter to verify the slip before the vote is cast. According to top experts, due to absence of end-to-end (E2E) verifiability, the present EVM system is not verifiable and therefore by its very design itself is unfit for democratic elections.
How then can elections conducted through these EVMs be considered fair?
3. With the introduction of VVPAT in all EVMs there are two votes now – one recorded in the EVM memory and one printed by the VVPAT.
Rule 56D(4)(b) of the Conduct of Election (Amendment) Rules, 2013 provides for the primacy of the VVPAT slip count over the electronic tally of ballots cast and calculated on the EVMs.
Why then is ECI consistently refusing 100% counting of VVPAT slips and insisting on counting only the EVM memory, which is not the real vote?
4. ECI is responsible for ensuring 100% secrecy of voting within each constituency by randomising vote counting which is essential for conducting elections in a free and fair manner as mandated in Article 324 of the constitution of India and Section 128 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
This is not being done, thereby exposing the weak and vulnerable sections of society to intense pressure by candidates and political parties hellbent on winning the election at any cost. This has led to claims of voter manipulation and suppression? Why has ECI allowed this?
5. Is the EVM-VVPAT connected to any external device after the elections are announced? If yes, then what are those external devices, and what is the communication protocol used?
If no, then how and at what stage is the information regarding candidate names and symbols uploaded to VVPAT?
6. Does the VVPAT have a programmable memory? If yes, then at what stages in the election process is it accessed by an external device? If no, then where are the names and symbols of the candidates stored in the VVPAT for it to print the same in the VVPAT slip later?
7. The ECI’s VVPAT system is not truly voter-verified because it does not provide the necessary agency to a voter to cancel her vote if she thinks it has been recorded incorrectly. Also, in case the voter raises a dispute, there is no way for her to prove that she is not lying.
The present rule of penalising her is draconian. Does it not militate against the very idea of universal franchise and citizen’s sovereignty?
8. Election results are being declared and governments formed without 100% post-election audit of the EVM counts against manual counting of the VVPAT slips, to ensure verification and reliable ascertainment of results. Can ours thus be called an ‘electoral democracy’ by any means?
9. The master summary of 542 constituencies in the parliament election of 2019 shows discrepancies in 347 seats.
Discrepancies range from one vote (lowest) to 1,01,323 votes – at 10.49% of the total votes, the highest – in six seats where discrepancy in votes is higher than the winning margin and the total volume of discrepancies is in the nature of 73,9104 votes put together. What did the ECI do to clarify and resolve this serious issue so that the integrity of the people’s mandate in this election is not in doubt?
10. Now that the EVM patent of public sector undertakings Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bengaluru, and the Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Hyderabad, that manufacture the EVMs stand expired, will the ECI be transparent enough to reveal the sources from where EVMs and VVPATs are being procured now, along with their design as well as functional integrity?
11. Article 324 of the constitution provides that the power of superintendence, direction and control of elections to parliament and state legislatures, shall be vested in the ECI. BEL and ECIL are not under the control or supervision of ECI. It has been alleged that these PSUs share confidential software programme with foreign chip manufacturers. Where, then, is the “control and supervision” of ECI over the process and mechanism of the elections?
ECI is maintaining dead silence and is not even responding to an RTI application filed in the matter.
It has deliberately refused to address these festering issues facing the ‘stand alone’ single-booth EVM voting system while resorting to multi-constituency remote EVM voting connected to the internet with all its resultant evils.
M.G. Devasahayam is a former Army and IAS officer and coordinator of Citizen’s Commission on Elections.