Reforms needed in the voting process

• The Supreme Court has decided to hear petitions seeking 100% cross-verification of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with the vote count as per Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

What is the history of the voting process?

• In the first two general elections of 1952 and 1957, a separate box was placed for each candidate with their election symbol.
• Thereafter from the third election, the ballot paper with names of candidates and their symbols was introduced with voters putting a stamp on the candidate of their choice.

Introduction of EVM

• The EVM was introduced on a trial basis in 1982 in the Assembly constituency of Paravur in Kerala.
• In Subramanian Swamy versus Election Commission of India (2013), the Supreme Court ruled that a paper trail is an indispensable requirement for free and fair elections.
• The 2019 elections had EVMs backed with 100% VVPAT in all constituencies.

What are international practices?

• Many western democracies continue to have paper ballots for their elections. Countries like England, France, The Netherlands and the U.S. have discontinued the use of EVMs for national or federal elections, after trials in the last two decades.
• In Germany, the Supreme Court of the country declared the use of EVMs in elections as unconstitutional in 2009.
• Some countries like Brazil, however, use EVMs for their elections.

Benefit of EVM

• The EVM has virtually eradicated booth capturing by limiting the rate of vote casting to four votes a minute and thus significantly increasing the time required for stuffing false votes.
• invalid votes that were a bane of paper ballots and also a bone of contention during the counting process have been eliminated through EVMs.
• Considering the size of our electorate which is close to one billion, the use of EVMs is eco-friendly as it reduces the consumption of paper.
• Finally, it provides administrative convenience for the polling officers on the day of the poll and has made the counting process faster and error-free.

How to uphold the integrity of EVM?

• These include random allocation of EVMs to booths before polls
• conduct of a mock poll to display the correctness of EVMs and VVPAT before commencement of the actual poll
• The serial number of EVMs along with total votes polled was shared with agents of candidates to verify the same at the time of counting of votes.

Allegations

• The most repeated allegation is that EVMs are susceptible to hacking as it is an electronic device.
• The sample size for matching of the EVM count with VVPAT slips at present is five per assembly constituency/segment.
• This is not based on any scientific criteria and may fail to detect defective EVMs during counting.

The way forward

• The sample for matching of EVM count and VVPAT slips should be decided in a scientific manner by dividing each State into large regions as suggested by experts.
• In case of even a single error, the VVPAT slips should be counted fully for the concerned region and form the basis for results.
• This would instill a statistically significant confidence in the counting process.
• Further, in order to provide a degree of cover for voters at the booth level, ‘totaliser’ machines can be introduced that would aggregate votes in 15-20 EVMs before revealing the candidate-wise count.