Tag: EVM malfunction

EVM Miscounts, VVPATs and the Citizen’s Right to a Secret, Verified Ballot

Democracy cannot be held prisoner to random sampling, especially when the EC won’t tell us what happens if a discrepancy between EVM tally and VVPAT slips is detected.

“Check one grain of rice, and you will know if the whole vessel of rice is cooked.” This is an analogy that is often used to show that a small sample is enough to be sure of the result. But what happens if someone might have put some poison into the vessel? Is it enough to test one, or even five randomly selected grains? Let us see why this old parable becomes immensely significant as the counting process starts in one of the most vituperative Indian elections.

Voters have chosen their candidate by pressing a button on an electronic voting machine (EVM). EVMs are black boxes, so it is impossible for voters to verify whether their votes have been recorded correctly. In India, the addition of the ‘voter verified paper audit trail’ (VVPAT), attached to each EVM, offers a verifiable record of every vote cast. They have been made available in all the polling booths as a mechanism to increase voter confidence. VVPAT slips are displayed to the voter through a small glass window for 7 seconds before dropping into a box. The voter gets to confirm if the candidate chosen by her on the EVM is the same as that which appears on the VVPAT slip. Ironically, it is not the confirmed slip, but the black box EVM that is being counted.

For now, the demand for counting all, or many more of the VVPAT slips has been rejected, with the assertion that counting VVPAT slips of five booths per assembly constituency is enough of a safeguard. Going by the parable, we need to know what happens if one of the five grains is found to be defective. As such, we are staring at a huge potential conflict during the counting process.

Also Read: SC Dismisses PIL Seeking 100% Matching of VVPAT Slips With EVMs, Cites CJI Order

Political parties who watch the electoral process in minute detail have been aware of the strengths and shortcomings of the electronic voting process. Almost every party (at least when it has been in opposition) and many civil society groups have expressed a distrust in the EVMs.

The apprehension that votes might not match the result led to a series of public interest litigations, and the Supreme Court orders that every voter would have to get a chance to verify their vote against the VVPAT slip. The court held: “We are satisfied that the ‘paper trail’ is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections… EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the accuracy of the voting system.”

Opposition leaders led by N. Chandrababu Naidu have asked for verification of all VVPATs. Credit: PTI

An arbitrary decision

The Election Commission (EC) went through the effort of getting the machines manufactured, and the slips printed, but surprisingly, decided to count slips of only one randomly sampled polling booth per assembly constituency. There are neither any clear rules nor any strict protocols from the EC in case there is any discrepancy between the EVM count and the VVPAT slips in any of the sampled booths. This could lead to bitter unresolved disputes between parties and returning officers.

With this completely arbitrary decision began a furious debate on statistical models and the right percentages to count, in order to detect, or eliminate possibilities of fraud or malfunction.

In February 2019, 21 opposition parties sought 50% random verification (counting) of EVMs with VVPAT slips. The EC responded that such an exercise would mean that the counting would take about six days. This seems to be a deliberately exaggerated estimate of the time required for counting. Even so, it cannot be the reason for not counting all the slips – especially in a seven-phase election.

Also Read: Civil Society Members Demand Counting of ‘All VVPAT Slips’ for ‘Fullest Transparency’

On March 22, the EC submitted a report to the SC, called “Random Sampling For Testing of EVMs via VVPAT Slip Verification”, and termed it the “Indian Statistical Institute’s (ISI) Committee Report” as part of its affidavit to the SC. An RTI reply has shown, that calling this an “ISI Committee Report” is misleading as there are no terms of reference with ISI per se.

Nevertheless, the report asserts that, 479 randomly selected booths were enough to assert the fairness of EVMs at the 99.9936% confidence level. To understand this, it’s instructive to recall the renowned statistician George Box’s quote, “All models are wrong but some are useful.” Even the best statistical procedure is subject to chance and hence errors. Assuming there are no mismatches between EVM and VVPAT slips in the randomly sampled booths, confidence levels, as mentioned in the so-called “ISI Report”, describe the uncertainty of the procedure in the long run. In simple terms, the claims of the ISI report imply that if 479 EVMs are randomly sampled many times, then in 64 out of 10,000 times the system would be unfair and the mismatch might go undetected.

There are approximately 10.35 lakh EVMs used in this election and so even according to this model, the way the EC is conducting the so called “audit” runs the risk of many undetected errors. Correct counting of votes cannot be left to chance and so statistical estimation and random sampling in the context of counting of votes should not even be an option. The right to a secret verified ballot is the most fundamental right of a citizen, and the verified slip, and not the opaque EVM machine should be counted as that ballot, otherwise it is akin to the state surreptitiously stealing the most fundamental right of a citizen. Counting anything less than 100% of the VVPATs must ideally be deemed unconstitutional.

Representative Image. Credit: PTI

Representative Image of a VVPAT. Credit: PTI

Consequences of detecting errors

But given that this decision has been taken, the consequences of detecting errors through random sampling must also be applied. Where there is any mismatch detected, we must count all the slips in the statistical ‘universe’ – in this case, the constituency. The 21 parties have repeatedly met the EC to demand that the sample VVPAT count be conducted before commencing the count of EVMs, and for a full VVPAT count in the constituency where a difference with the sampled EVM is found. They are yet to receive a response.

Also Read: The Election Commission Must Not Come in the Way of More VVPAT Verification

EVMs were used in German elections between 1998 and 2005 till the constitutional court banned their use, stating that “the use of voting machines which electronically record the voters’ votes and electronically ascertain the election result only meets the constitutional requirements if the essential steps of the voting and of the ascertainment of the result can be examined reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject.”  Several other developed, tech savvy countries have discarded using EVMs.

The key issue, therefore, is a reliable, transparent, and non-specialist examination of the counting process. Today, there is massive confusion and potential arbitrariness. By resisting the counting of 100% of VVPATs, the EC and the ruling party have already invited suspicion about fair elections. It has made matters worse by issuing orders that the counting of VVPAT slips can start, once the EVM counting is complete. That would make it very difficult to keep the result from being declared even where there is a discrepancy in the sampled machines.

To not count 100% VVPAT slips where an error is detected in the audit, jeopardises the integrity and effort of the entire VVPAT process. In the event of even one mismatch, there should be clear protocols mandating a count of all the VVPAT slips in the constituency, before commencing the EVM count. In the absence, of such a protocol, there is likely to be suspicion, confusion, conflict, and a very discredited electoral process.

Rajendran Narayanan teaches at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. Nikhil Dey works with the MKSS and the National Campaign for the Peoples Right to Information (NCPRI).

Pranab Mukherjee Expresses Concern Over Reports of Alleged EVM Tampering

He said the Election Commission must “put all speculation to rest”.

New Delhi: Joining the ongoing controversy over EVMs, former President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday expressed concern over the alleged tampering of voters’ verdict, saying that the onus of ensuring institutional integrity lies with the Election Commission, which should put all speculation to rest.

He also said that there can be no room for speculations that challenge the very basis of Indian democracy.

“I am concerned at reports of alleged tampering of voters’ verdict. The safety and security of EVMs which are in the custody of ECI is the responsibility of the Commission,” he said in a statement posted on his Twitter handle.

People’s mandate is sacrosanct and has to be above any iota of reasonable doubt, he said.

Also read: SC Dismisses PIL Seeking 100% Matching of VVPAT Slips With EVMs, Cites CJI Order

“The onus of ensuring institutional integrity in this case lies with the Election Commission of India. They must do so and put all speculation to rest,” he said.

Mukherjee said as a firm believer in the country’s institutions, it is his considered opinion that it is the ‘workmen’ who decide how the institutional ‘tools’ perform.

Protests broke out in some parts of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday after videos of alleged movement and tampering of EVMs went viral on social media, a charge dismissed by the EC as “frivolous” and “unfounded”.

The Congress said that the EC should take immediate and effective steps to address the complaints of movement of EVMs from strongrooms from various parts of the country.

Top opposition leaders, who met on Tuesday, also decided to move the EC to press for their demand of tallying the paper trail of votes (VVPATs) with the EVM figures.

VVPAT Verification: The Supreme Court Must Defend Democracy

Judges of the highest court were anguished that democracy was in “peril”, but seem to be reluctant to take the necessary steps to ensure elections are “free and fair”.

For citizens of India who still care about preserving constitutional democracy, it was a reassuring moment when four senior-most judges of the highest court in the land confided publicly their fear that democracy was “in peril”. Their reference was to the coercive and unlawful attempts to influence the all-important independence of the judicial branch of the state.

It is this principled anguish of the highest court that then encourages the citizen to ask a related question. Is it not the case that the most fundamental premise – indeed, the most significant part of the “basic features” of the Constitution – on which constitutional democracy rests is that there shall be “free and fair” elections to all legislative structures of the state?

Can it be argued that the independence of the judiciary can stand by itself in a situation where such elections come under severe cloud, rendering, potentially, the mandate of the dubiously elected executive branch fraudulent and null?

Further, can it be anybody’s case that the fairness of the electoral process is a concern only for the authorities entrusted with conducting such polls and not for the voter? Or that procedural and other logistical inconveniences take precedence over the constitutional injunction of “free and fair” polls? Or, that speedily rendered poll results override the “fairness” of those results?

Given the proven and publicly demonstrated anguish of the highest court with respect to “democracy in peril”, we may assume that the lordships will share the burden of the interrogatives recorded here.

That being assumed on sound constitutional principles, the citizen is then rather askance at the less than acute consideration that the persistent doubts that have been raised about the capacity of the EVMs to deliver “free and fair” electoral verdicts.

Representative Image. Credit: PTI

It is no secret anymore that many instances of the suspiciously tainted malfunction of these machines have come to the fore. Credit: PTI

It is no secret anymore that many instances of the suspiciously tainted malfunction of these machines have come to the fore. Most recently, for instance, it was no less a man than an ex-DGP who made public complaint of how the result of his franchise did not match with his electoral choice. In many cases, more ballots have been found within the machine than existed in a particular booth. Many have complained that regardless of what button they pressed, the vote went to the ruling party candidate.

It is to counter these sorts of experiences that the authorities agreed, on persistent persuasion, to introduce the mechanism of the VVPAT. Having introduced that mechanism to validate votes cast, does it not seem strange and wholly without reason that there is such intransigent reluctance on the part of the Election Commission to make full use of the VVPATs to ensure that no voter is left with the least doubt as to the veracity of the constitutional-electoral choice he/she may have made.

And, regrettably, the reluctance of the Supreme Court to acknowledge the issue involved, namely the satisfaction of the “basic feature” of the constitution that there be “free and fair” exercise of voter choice, and most crucially, a fair and faultless computation of the results of that exercise, leaving no one in doubt that the government they have got is the government they voted for.

The court has to date conceded that the paper trail of a maximum of five EVMs per assembly segment may be verified to see if these match the votes cast. May we ask what is the reasoned basis for this arbitrary figure? May we ask what is to be done should any of the five VVPATs show a mismatch? Can it just be assumed that all the rest would be free of trouble? May we ask why so much money has been expended on the VVPATs if they are not to be put to full use? May we ask whether it matters more that the declaration of results not be delayed or that the results that are declared are “fair”? May we ask in what way is a bogus electoral result less heinously fatal to democracy than any attempt to interfere in the independence of the judiciary?

At a time when the matter is again likely to come up for consideration before the court, may we entreat it to take on hand the full and potentially system debilitating aspects of the matter that clearly agitates good citizens across the board? Could it prevent the realm from descending into a good and proper banana republic?

Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.

‘Russiagate’ Comes to Andhra Pradesh

N. Chandrababu Naidu has claimed that “Russian agents” are remotely controlling EVMs.

New Delhi: Robert Mueller’s conclusion that Russia did try to interfere with the US Presidential elections in 2016 seems to have found some unlikely takers in India. On Tuesday, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu told media that EVMs could be remotely controlled and that “Russian agents” were doing so.

While there have been numerous reports of EVM malfunctions during the first three phases of the general elections, Naidu’s claim is rather bizarre. The Election Commission has repeatedly denied that EVMs can be hacked, while experts have also backed this claim.

Also Read: Supreme Court Directs EC to Increase Checks on VVPAT Slips

Complaints made by political parties about EVM tampering are opportunistic at best. The claims are usually made by opposition parties, as the BJP itself demonstrated during elections in 2009. It has since gone on to become a vehement defender of the machines.

Naidu is not the first Indian politician to claim Russian interference in the Indian elections. Evangelist-politician K.A. Paul did so a few weeks ago. In the Andhra Pradesh assembly elections – held concurrently with the Lok Sabha elections on April 11 – Paul fielded at least 19 dummy candidates who had very similar names to those of the YSR Congress party, the main opposition. Paul was subsequently accused of being a “dummy party” of Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP).

A day after the election, Paul claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was working with Russian President Vladimir Putin to install “chips” in EVMs. This, he said, would see the BJP return to power. This “conspiracy”, Paul claimed, would ensure a victory of the YSR Congress party in Andhra Pradesh.

When Naidu said “rumours” suggest that Russian agents are controlling EVMs, he was amplifying Paul’s statements. Before he entered the fray in these elections, Paul was based in the US. He took an active interest in American politics, endorsing both Barack Obama and Donald Trump during past presidential elections.

Curiously, though he claims to be a close aide to Trump, the evangelist seems to have been inspired by his opponents. The Democrats and a large section of the media were hopeful that the Mueller Report would topple the billionaire businessman’s presidency. Trump labelled the investigation a “witch hunt“.

Also Read: Forensic Probe Into Aadhaar Data Controversy in Andhra Pradesh Raises Troubling Questions

Naidu seems to have realised that such bizarre claims may not have much traction. On Wednesday, he filed a review petition seeking 50% verification of VVPAT slips. The Supreme Court has directed the EC to increase the number of EVMs cross verified with VVPAT to five EVMs per constituency, up from the previous count of just one.

In the review petition, Naidu and other opposition party leaders said:

The Petitioners submit that the aforesaid increase to a mere 2 % is not sufficient and will not make any substantial difference to the situation that existed prior to the passing of the impugned order. Therefore, even though the Petitioners have succeeded on the merits of their contention, their success does not resolve their grievance or cause any meaningful change to the situation that they were originally aggrieved of.

EVM Malfunction: Does Criminalisation Deter Genuine Complaints?

Complainants may face a six-month jail term if their declaration is found false during a test vote. But the process does not differentiate between a deliberately false complaint and a genuine one.

New Delhi: On April 23, standing outside a polling booth in Guwahati, former DGP and well-known Assamese writer Harekrishna Deka complained to the local media, “Even though I pressed the button for a certain candidate, the VVPAT registered it under some other candidate.”

Deka said, “I challenged (it), asked him (the polling officer) why this happened. He said I could challenge it by paying Rs 2, but added that if I made a false complaint, I would be punished for six months. I do not want to take the risk. In what manner will you prove it?”

State chief electoral officer (CEO) Mukesh Sahu said that Deka can prove it by declaring it to the presiding officer. “The presiding officer will give him a form where he will have to declare that his statement is true. If found false, action will be taken.” Sahu told the news magazine InsideNE, “If he gives that declaration, he will have to show by giving a test vote [to prove] what he is saying is true. The form number is 49 (MA).”

Also Read: VVPATs: This Simple Proposal Will Help the Election Commission Clear the Air on EVM Use

Deka’s allegation about EVM malfunctioning causing votes to register for a different candidate is not new. In the the last two phases of voting for the general elections, several similar allegations have been made. During the April 11 phase, a voter from Meerut showed a video he had recorded with his phone camera as “evidence” to complain that his vote cast for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BJP) got registered for the BJP. The Times of India said, “Although officials replaced the ‘faulty’ machine, claiming it was a ‘malfunction’, non-BJP parties alleged that machines had been tampered with.”

Even as Deka was complaining to the media in Guwahati on April 23, news reports spoke of one voter in Kerala’s Kovalam complaining, “I have voted for Congress, but the picture [that] came on the (VVPAT) screen and the slip was lotus. I want to cast my vote again.” Yet another voter from Thiruvananthapuram too made a similar complaint during the day.

With several complaints coming from voters during the three phases of voting, it is worthwhile to highlight the mechanism put in place by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to register complaints.

Deka was not far from the truth when he said he would run the “risk” of a six-month jail term for complaining to the ECI about a possible malfunctioning of the EVM leading to votes registered to the wrong candidate.

As per rules amended by the ECI in 2013, the complainant will have to fill up a declaration form and be ready to cast a test vote to state that her/his allegations are “true and bona fide.”

What follows such a declaration does pose the question: Is it a veritable intimidation for and a deterrent to voters making genuine complaints?

As per the 2013 rules, the complainant can not only be jailed for six months under Section 177 of the IPC for “furnishing false information” but also fined a sum of Rs 1,000. News reports said the new rules were introduced along with the concept of printers for the paper trail of votes recorded by the EVMs through VVPAT machines.

It brings us back to the question that Deka posed to the authorities. “Who will take the risk?” An FIR was registered against the Meerut complainant after ECI officials found the machine was working ‘fine’. In the third phase too, an FIR was lodged against the voter from Thiruvananthapuram who lodged a complaint.

EVM machines, VVPATs and other election material being distributed among polling officers ahead of the first phase of polling in Tezpur, April 10, 2019. Credit: PTI

The case for decriminalisation

Last month, Tiruvalla-based Philose Koshy made the case for decriminalising filing a complainant under form 49 (MA). In a letter to CEC Sunil Aurora, Koshy, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus, wrote, “Free and fair election process, which is the bedrock of Indian democracy, would be under serious threat if voters fail to report the false VVPAT display for fear of criminal prosecution in case the complaint is “found” false by the ECI officials. The honourable Supreme Court has held in a catena of cases that the constitutional protection for the fundamental political expression is calculated to insulate the freedom from such a chilling effect.”

Koshy suggested that instead of the VVPAT slip directly dropping into the ballot box, the ECI should allow the slip to be collected by the voter and after inspecting it, drop it into the box.

Early this week, Koshy, along with Bhim Army leader Chandrasekhar Azad and Sanjeev Danda, secretary, Dalit Aadivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM) demanded de-criminalisation of EVM complaints, besides demanding 50% VVPAT verification.

Speaking to The Wire, Koshy said, “The basis for EC’s criminalisation of the complaint against EVM malfunctioning is to stop false complaints. But it has not been able to differentiate between a deliberately made false complaint and a real one.”

He said this is particularly worrying when voting through EVMs is the main expression of a citizen’s right in a democracy. He said, “The voter only gets seven seconds to ascertain that her vote was correctly registered. She could be wrong at times. A voter must be allowed that right. Not everybody complains anyway. Also, there is no empirical evidence with the EC to conclude that voters will misuse such a facility.”

Also Read: The Election Commission Must Not Come in the Way of More VVPAT Verification

Koshy said in most cases, the voter cannot prove his/her point through a test vote, simply because a machine may not repeat the malfunction. “It is a like a car, which may not start sometimes. But when you call the mechanic, it suddenly does.”

Apart from suggesting voter verification before the VVPAT is dropped into a ballot box, Koshy also suggested to the EC to allow voters to click a photo so that they have proof to lodge a complaint. “But verification of the slip by the voter and manually dropping it into a ballot box is a much better option. If a photo is taken, the voter’s privacy may be violated,” he pointed out.

Intimidation and deterrent

Activist Teesta Setalvad also made a similar request to the CEC on April 1. “Under Section 49MA of the Conduct of Election (Amendment) Rules, 2013, the presiding officer of a polling station first ‘warns’ the voter on the consequences of filing a false complaint. This itself is an intimidation and a deterrent (given our vast socio-economic disparities),” she wrote.

Former CEC S.Y. Quraishi, who was not fully aware of the criminalisation of the complaint by the EC since 2013, however, felt that the entire process of voting through EVM/VVPAT “is a well considered move” and must be gauged from “the experience of it”.

“Theoretically, it is correct that a machine might malfunction one time and may not the next time. But the chances are very remote. About the rule, I would say that it is six years old, and what has been the experience of it? Is it just notional? How has it worked? How have the complaints been dealt with so far? Sometimes, a false complaint can delay the voting process. The system of a test vote by a voter was brought in only because the complaint has to be based on facts. But if it is proving to be too harsh on voters, it will have to be seen.”

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Electronic Voting Machines and VVPATs

The recommendations of an Indian Statistical Institute report, which indicate that a sample verification of 479 EVMs would be sufficient, are flawed.

In Douglas Adams’s irreverent sci-fi classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the supercomputer Deep Thought, after spending seven-and-a-half million years on it, derives the ‘Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything’. It is the number 42.

Deep Thought also clarifies that the answer is meaningless because the people who programmed the computer didn’t actually know what the question was.

Closer to home, a few judges of our Supreme Court and many renowned lawyers sought to understand the meaning of the number ‘479’, obtained ostensibly from an Indian Statistical Institute report to the Election Commission of India. The three learned authors of this report spent seven-and-a-half months to come up with this number, which indicates the number of EVMs that should be randomly checked with VVPAT.

On a careful reading of the report, we now understand the question to which the answer is 479.

It is the answer to a question of statistical quality-control. Indeed, this would have been the same answer to the question of how many pencils need to be checked to ensure that in a pencil factory, the weekly production of 15 lakh pencils doesn’t have more than 2% defects – or in other words, whether the EVMs when they were produced had manufacturing defects or not.

Before we move to other aspects of this report, we first point out a fundamental flaw in the assumptions on which this report is based. The report considers all the EVMs of India to be a single population, among which defects have to be searched. India does not have a presidential system of elections. Instead, we choose representatives in each constituency to send to Parliament.

In such a model, a voter from a particular constituency has to be satisfied that their representative has legitimately won the elections and the result is not because of machine tampering. Thus, the random checks have to be done among the machines at constituency-level, which constitutes the relevant population.

Once this fact is noted, then following the ‘hypergeometric model’ of the report, and assuming 1,500 EVM-VVPATs in each constituency with 2% having defects, one comes to a figure of approximately 350 per constituency as the number of EVMs whose VVPATs have to be tallied. This gives an overall number for the country of around 2 lakh of randomly selected EVMs whose VVPATs have to be cross-checked.

However, this number of 350 per constituency, which is arrived at from the hypergeometric model used in the report, is flawed.

Indeed suppose that there are 15 lakh voters in each of two distinct constituencies ‘A’ and ‘B’. Also assume that in constituency A the winning margin is 1.5 lakh votes, while in constituency B the winning margin is 15,000 votes, and this is not an unrealistic scenario, as a perusal of past election data will suggest. It is not rocket science to realise that even a small error may change the outcome in constituency B, while it will need a larger error to change the outcome in constituency A.

For constituency B, tampering of 7,500 votes is enough to change the outcome, while for constituency A there has to be tampering of 75,000 votes. In percentages terms, an error in the count of 0.5% of the electorate of constituency B is enough to change the outcome, whereas in constituency A the percentage required is 5%.

Thus the number of samples to be checked for constituency B has to be much larger than that for constituency A. Indeed the sample size has to depend on the size of the winning margin. A ‘one size fits all’ cannot be a solution as is done in the said report where a uniform 2% error is used.

A quick calculation, assuming there are 1,500 EVMs in the constituencies (each EVM on an average handles 1000 votes), it will be enough to check 150 VVPATs for the constituency ‘A’, while to obtain a precision given in the report, it will be required to check about 950 VVPATs for the constituency ‘B’.

The report also proceeds to give a sequential scheme of checking in case of mismatch between the VVPAT and the EVM counts. If there is only one mismatch in the 479 randomly selected EVMs, the report suggests that an extra 128 EVMs be randomly selected and their VVPATs checked for mismatches. If there are two mismatches in the original 479 and the additional 128, then another extra 110 are to be selected and their VVPATs tallied to check for mismatches, etc.

Again, clearly, if there is a mismatch in an EVM used in a particular constituency, in the random choice of the EVMs for the additional checks, the chosen machines may come from completely different constituencies. This hardly makes any sense.

There is one more fallacy of checking a fixed number (1 or 5) of EVM-VVPATs for each assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency. For example, each parliamentary constituency in UP has five assembly segments and hence, assuming five VVPATs are to be verified per assembly segment, we need to check 25 machines.

On the other hand, Mizoram has one parliamentary constituency with 40 assembly segments, leading to checking of 200 of them. Given the objection of the ECI about the difficult terrain, checking 200 machines in Mizoram should have been a bigger concern than checking only five in UP. An even more interesting conundrum arises in the five parliamentary seats in the union territories without any assembly.

Recall what professor P.C. Mahalanobis said to the 125th meeting of the American Statistical Association, about the difficulty of applying “Statistics as a Key Technology” to the official systems in India. The Father of Indian Statistics lamented: “The very idea of having crosschecks is frightening as conflicting results arising from independent checks would be ‘confusing’ and must be resisted and is being resisted even today.”

How correct and contextual Mahalanobis sounds, even 54 years later.

Antar Bandyopadhyay, Krishanu Maulik and Rahul Roy work at the Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Division of the Indian Statistical Institute. The views expressed here are personal.

EVM ‘Malfunction’ Not Probed Properly by Maharashtra SEC

Polling officers did not act when voters complained that a light was flashing against the BJP candidate’s name when they pressed the button in support of the independent candidate.

EVM

Electronic voting machine. Credit: PTI

The officials of the Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC), responsible for the conduct of municipal polls in the state, were not only slow to react to complaints about one of the machines “malfunctioning” at the Sultanpur polling station during the elections to the Buldhana Zila Parishad earlier this year, after the anomaly – under which all the votes being polled for an independent candidate with coconut symbol were found to be going to the BJP candidate – came to light, but they also did not probe the matter thoroughly.

The information was obtained under the Right to Information Act (RTI) by activist Anil Gagali, and recently blew the lid on how the polling officers initially did not act on the complaint of the voters, that a light was flashing against the name of the BJP candidate whenever they pressed the button in support of the independent candidate.

This issue has again given rise to speculation that electronic voting machines (EVMs) are being tampered to benefit the BJP candidates across the country. Incidentally, the issue had first been raised by Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati after the announcement of assembly election results to five states in March this year. Subsequently, Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal had also expressed similar doubts about voting in Punjab and Goa. Later, his party had even organised a display in Delhi Assembly of how EVMs can be tampered.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) had responded to the complaints by inviting all the parties who had approached it and those which had participated in the assembly polls to an EVM challenge, where, however, due to the restrictions imposed by the ECI the parties that participated were not able to prove any tampering. The ECI had also noted in connection with complaints about EVM malfunction in a municipal poll in Maharashtra then that these elections are conducted by SECs which are not under it.

In the present case too, The Wire had asked the ECI spokesperson how it was viewing the Sultanpur polling station case and if the state commission has submitted any report to it in the matter, but the ECI chose not to reply.

Incidentally, the “malfunction” in the Sultanpur machine had taken place in the polls before the EVM issue had heated up in March. Galgali, however, insisted that it is not a case of malfunction but EVM fraud.

He said the Buldhana collectorate’s election department had in its reply to his query stated that the complaints was received from polling station no. 56 in Sultanpur of Lonar town that when the voter pressed the button next to independent candidate’s coconut symbol at number 1, the LED lamp flashed against the button of BJP candidate’s lotus symbol which was at number 4, indicating that the vote had gone to the latter.

The department admitted that while the first complaint was received around 10 am, it was ignored by the election officer on duty. It was only subsequently when more voters complaints that the election officer took cognisance around 1-30 pm and then took up the matter with the polling agents of all the parties. The officer, Manikrao Baazad, then obtained their consent before inspecting the machines.

Thereafter the booth in-charge also looked into the matter and brought the issue to the notice of the area returning officer. The matter was then verified by the assistant returning officer who visited the booth and the election was subsequently cancelled and a report was sent to the collector. The EVM in question was sealed and a standby unit was put in operation. A repoll was subsequently conducted on February 21 at the booth.

When The Wire spoke to Assistant Commissioner Avinash Sanas about the developments, he said the issue has come into the limelight despite a repoll having been conducted at the booth. But the officer could not explain why the “malfunction”, even if there was one, was not probed thoroughly especially in the wake of the huge uproar the issue of alleged EVM tampering had subsequently created at the national level.

Should the Maharashtra SEC not brought this issue to the notice of the ECI considering its significance in the light of allegations being levelled by the opposition parties and the Commission’s efforts to answer their concerns.

But for Galgali’s painstaking effort, perhaps the issue would got lost just the way the votes to the independent candidate were going.