Need to strengthen democratic process by reverting to Ballots Paper

The controversy over Electronic Voting Machines refuses to die ever since the Congress alleged vote tampering in the Maharashtra assembly elections behind its humiliating defeat at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party and allies.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sanjay Raut, a Congress ally, is unable to buy into the election results till date, and blames the EVM for Maha Vikas Aghadi's defeat. On the other hand the BJP led Mahayuti won 230 out of 288 seats in Maharashtra, routing the Opposition.

It is unjustified for Justice Vikram Nath to orally pass remarks during the hearing of an EVM related election petition, 'EVMs are fine if you win and tampered if you lose.' The national interest of  free and fair democracy must be above the needs of an individual who should be restrained from hijacking Indian democracy through the EVM.  

First of all what made for the PM Narendra Modi to show doors to the CJI from the Election Commissioners selection Committee. An organised anti democratic process of RSS and BJP is polluting the democratic Institution Election Commission of India by changing its guards with the persons of the party's chance who can not promotie, coordinate, controle and effective management.

National interests are paramount than an individual or his party'to retain EVMs to hijack the free and fair election process by the retired and tired State servants affiliated to one party or organisation, who dance to the tune of ruling establishment.  

Nation should have her Democracy's Guardians like Sukumar Sen (21 March 1950 to 19 December 1958), KVK Sundaram (20 December 1958 to 30 September 1967),  SP Sen Verma (1 October 1967 to 30 September 1972)  Dr Nagendra Singh (1 October 1972 to 6 February 1973),  T Swaminathan
(7 February 1973 to 17 June 1977),  SL Shakdhar (18 June 1977 to 17 June 1982),  RK Trivedi (18 June 1982 to 31 December 1985), . RVS Peri Sastri (1 January 1986 to 25 November 1990) and TN Seshan (12 December 1990 to 11 December 1996) 

These sons of India made India proud and India emerged as the world largest democracy while being the members of the Institution of Election  Commission of India,  who never compromised with Democratic exigencies  over their personal needs.  Their tenures as ECI members were  never questioned by any subjects or when an acid test was applied by the Judiciary.

Therefore CJI should be part and parcel along with the PM and Leader of the Opposition to protect the larger interest of free and fair democratic process.

It needs to be recalled that the BJP too blamed EVMs for its unexpected defeat in the 2004 general elections; the Congress did likewise in 2014. The most important reason is the lack of transparency in the entire process about the EVM's 'junctions'.

What stops the Election Commission of India and the judiciary from cleaning dirt gathering on the Election process. The western nations, after facing flaws in  EVMs, reverted to the Ballots Paper. There is very little technical detail available and in spite of asking very specific questions, those details are not provided by the ECI. Human needs and lust to etain power are growing over the national crucial issues and her exigencies.

When you have something shrouded in mystery there will always be a lot of guesswork around whatever is happening. In addition to that, things have been murkier because the number of votes counted keeps on changing after voting has stopped.

It is most unfortunate that every time the Election Commission comes up with some excuse or the other. If an electronic device is closed or sealed, there is no way even one vote can be added or subtracted because the device is sealed but it can be monitored by a remote controlling process like RSS monitoring its governance through its political hand the BJP.

The Opposition is accusing the ECI of increasing the vote percentage after voting day as it happened in the Haryana and Maharashtra assembly elections. Is not something new as it happened earlier too.

Earlier we used to count the number of votes that was cast that clarified all the doubts over the mandate. Now they are giving the percentage of votes, which itself is obfuscation of data.

For example, say, in one polling booth 'A' let us say in booth 'A' there are 1,200 voters. And let us say by 11 am 340 voters have voted in the booth. Now every two hours the election officer of that booth has to upload the percentage of voters voting in that booth via the ECI's Encore app. This app connects the mobile phone of that officer to the ECI Web server.

Now let us go back to booth 'A' and take the percentage of 340 vis a vis 1,200 voters of that booth. Now if that election officer does not do proper math and takes a base of 1,000 voters instead of 1,200 voters, the percentage of voting at 11 am for that booth will come to 34 percent.

This is humanly possible because there is no standard operating procedure on the ECI Web site.

Several Judges (Voters) in the Democratic process time and again raised this question through their RTI (Right to Information) pleas but have not got any reasonable response from the Election of India yet.

Now when you do not have any standard operation procedure, the polling officer of that booth can follow whatever his mind tells him/her at that point of time to give importance to his personal needs over the national exigencies.

If s/he took 34 percent of the voting of 1,000 voters the result would be 340 votes but in actual 34 percent voting for that booth should be 351 votes. So, 11 votes have been added in that polling booth even though those votes have not been cast. It happens when the election agent of the leading party goes missing from Polling Boots when he goes to attend his natural call without any replacement.

In a similar manner if there are 100 voting booths in the assembly constituency and every polling officer is rounding off the percentage of votes, then you have added 1,100 votes which were actually not cast.

This is obfuscation. The ECI is creating an error where none was due.

Vote is data and data is acquired from the EVM. And EVM is the machine which only gives you the count and not the percentage because EVM is not aware of the percentage.

The primary rule of data science is to capture the data at its source in the form which is available. Now, the source is the EVM machine which is giving you the number, so what is the point in changing that and making it in percentage terms of voter turnout.

In 2017 the Election Commission called for a hackathon challenge and dared anyone to hack the EVMs. Why did no one prove them wrong then. Why give reliance to a particular incident why not to a perfect situation across the nation. Now the General Election is calculated in that direction to hijack national immunity.

There are two responses. Firstly, if nobody found fault in 2017 that does not mean that no one must find a flaw now. This argument does not hold because life is about learning and discovering things.

Secondly, if you look at the test it was not made available. This hackathon challenge was available only to political parties and a person not associated with any political party or party's representative. The common man who passes his judgement and decree against his super vote, could not participate in this hackathon.

There is no need to be personal or 'me' or 'I' oriented commoners' judgement but the hackathon was not allowed for individual citizens of India to participate in free and fair election process to be ensured impersonal ECI Commissioners if any.

Secondly, nobody was allowed to touch the EVM for the number of key processes that they had proposed. And if any one's memory serves his right, seven minutes or seconds time given for this hackathon challenge. It is unfair and unjust. One could not also open the machine to see. You were supposed to do things as the ECI prescribed.

This is not the way testing takes place. If you are buying a car and the car showroom guy tells you to test drive but then puts a condition that you cannot start by reversing the car first. If he tells you that you have to put it in first gear and move ahead and not to reverse the car as the first step. Obviously you will not buy that car because a car manufacturer cannot give instructions that buyers should not ask questions about the car.

At best what would have happened in the 2017 hackathon was that some EVMs would have got damaged but nothing more. If we question ourselves that after the 2017 election, the ECI never threw a challenge to restrain hacking of the EVM. Unfortunate.

No, they never opened that challenge to anyone. Okay, we accept EVMs cannot be hacked because they are not connected. EVMs can be manipulated. If we check EVMs we can find out they can be manipulated.  There will always be a doubt that needs to be ratified in all processes.

The Supreme Court often says political parties denounce EVMs when they lose elections but not when they win. Unfortunately common citizens like us are told that they will not entertain anything about EVMs for reasons best known to them. It is a very unfair stance to take.

You may have discussed an issue ten times and if the 11th time somebody comes and raises three basic different sets of questions he has to be welcomed with his questions as the Supreme Court is the last resort where every Indian can approach to seek a fair hearing and judgment.

Now if the Supreme Court says we are not going to hear anything, where do you go. The only recourse then is to return to the ballot box for which there has to be a movement on the road. People will come to the streets for agitation and go back to the bullock cart age of voting.

This is sad because I always say that if you have a car and it is not functioning you don't go back to the bullock cart. You either repair the car or buy a new car.

The nation need not rely upon one method of election that suit one person or organisation,  Any election with EVM will be absolutely free and fair unless the entire EVM process is made transparent -- and transparent in all senses to the public at large, who's the fundamental right to vote is exercised through this mode.

First and foremost, going back to ballot papers is not the solution and is a futile and not a progressive argument. The correct solution is to make EVMs fool-proof and manipulation-proof.

Let's understand -- voting is electronic now. Vote is the data and data is generated in the ballot unit. It goes to the control unit from the ballot unit and it travels back to the control unit via the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

The data stops when the ballot unit creates it, the control unit receives it, which it then sends to VVPAT. VVPAT receives it and sends it back to the control unit. And the control unit receives it again.

At each stop the rolling checksum of the data on the device should be maintained. Checksum is an alphanumeric string generated by a mathematical formula based on the data that is coming in. This is a universally accepted method to detect if data has remained unchanged since its source/generation.

A checksum should be maintained by the ballot unit when it sends the vote to the control unit by the control unit when it receives the vote, by VVPAT when it receives the vote from control unit, and lastly it should again be maintained by the control unit when it receives the vote back from the VVPAT.

It should be demonstrable that all the checksums are the same -- and this is the absolute cornerstone of the solution. If you do that, then you are establishing what you call data integrity.

It means whatever button was pressed, the same data travelled right up to the time control unit finally saved it. Only then there will be total transparency and people will not complain that the machine is at fault. Today, that is not done.

It is time and again alleged that wherever EVMs were charged 99 percent the BJP has won the election. No need to comment on battery arguments. If any battery is used for 10 to 12 hours it will drain depending on the size and load on the battery. If we charge our phone and not use it, then the battery can last for seven days but if you use your phone heavily it may last for 7 to 8 hours only.

Similarly, the argument here is if the EVM's battery is used for more time they would show less charge. And when it is said that 99 percent of batteries are shown, it is indirectly stating that the EVMs were changed during the counting of votes.

This is digressing and distracting from the important technical questions such as data audit trail that need to be raised and answered.

Why arguments and counter arguments for and against the process to assure democracy ?  

To assure true and just democracy the best answer is to revert to Ballots paper.