EVM Randomizaton: A step to reduce the trust deficit

 In my earlier post I mentioned how a trust deficit in EVM has become a big issue for our democratic set up and how Election commission is responding to  it. The new CEC (chief election commissioner) has taken some good measures to ensure a trust building for EVMs too.

He has tried to minimize or virtually zeroed the chances of tempering using randomization at two layers.These are some of the excerpts of the EC announcement.

"There are two firsts related to the forthcoming election. With increasing demand to replace Electronic Voting Machines with ballot paper, EC, for the first time, has planned a two-stage randomisation of these machines to prove that they cannot and, are not, manipulated.


In the first stage, all EVMs stored in the district storage center will be randomized by the district election officer in the presence of representatives of recognized political parties for allocation assembly constituency wise. After the EVMs in a constituency are prepared for poll by the returning officer and the ballot units are fitted with ballot papers, the EVMs will again be randomized to decide the actual polling stations in which they will be ultimately used. The second stage randomisation will also be done in the presence of observers and candidates or their election agents. "

Apart from these corrective measure  Chief Election Commissioner S Y Qureshi also disclosed that  commission’s new set of instructions to control the influence of money power in elections are ready for implementation in the Bihar Assembly elections.

on paid news he said it should be a seen in the context of the overall control of money power.


Qureshi also announced steps to curb the influence of muscle power and said vulnerability mapping would be done to identify sensitive booths.


“In addition to the voting trend and the history of violence, many other factors like background of the candidates will also be considered to map sensitive booths. Accordingly, preventive measures will be taken,” he said.

All the above steps are definitely a start of election reforms in small way where EC can do it by own and should be appreciated in this regard.

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Doubt and Democracy

 

Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of USA, defines democracy as "Government of the people, by the people, for the people". Journey of USA , the world oldest democracy, to this stage has not been so smooth. Even the 2nd term election of George W. Bush was disputed in many way for electoral rigging. Achieving a perfect democratic setup is an ongoing process where every new doubts and difficulties brings an opportunity to emend the existing system towards perfection.

We, the people in India, always hear the news about electoral rigging in many ways. Almost all link from one process to another, which leads to a candidate being elected has been targeted by political parties or candidates to win the election by any means. Earlier the ruling party used  their influence over election commission/officers to disqualify other candidates except their own. Then ruling party used a lot of other weak link to exploit to ensure win for its candidates.

In India, election is a complex process, which has a lots of open weak links to exploit.Here I will try to mention as much as I could think of.

1.) Declaration of date for election process

2.) Filing of nomination /taking it back

3.) Election campaign

4.) End of campaign--> Casting of votes

5.) Counting of votes --> declaration of winning candidate

6.) Formation of Govt.

These are the six broad steps which complete the electoral process. To regulate these steps election commission has its own laws which have been evolving over the years to provide a free and fair verdict. To conduct this mammoth task of election in India where around ~ 700 million people are registered as eligible voter is not a easy task.  These are some of the numbers which show the enormity of general election in India. In 2004 ..

• 1351 candidates from 6 National parties, 801 candidates from 36 State parties, 898 candidates from officially recognized parties and 2385 Independent candidate totaling around 5500.
• A total number of 38,99,48,330 people voted out of total electorate size of 67,14,87,930 in about 700000 polling stations spread across widely varying geographic and climatic zones. 
• The Election Commission employed almost 4 million people to run the election

Over the year EC has shifted from paper ballot to electronic voting machines (EVM).The security which was needed to provide a paper ballot box has now shifted to security to EVM itself. The arrival of EVM has made the counting process easy and we are now able to get the result in a day which was a long and strenuous process earlier with paper ballot.

Its human nature that we don't believe the unacceptable easily. A losing candidate always finds some reason to question the mandate until he is fully satisfied. With the paper ballot it was possible to trail all the evidences and become satisfied with the outcome finally. EVMs does not go with people emotions, they are not designed to do so, as with the case of any machine. Although many people have faith in  EC and its claim that EVMs can't be tempered with, but a recent demonstration and paper presentation in this regard has been able to make a dent in this belief.Since it is a machine and can be tampered with, the system needs an overhaul. Remember, an election can never be fought on trust; it is always fought on proof.  see the video





Although the possibility of a large scale rigging is not possible with the procedural strictness within the security guidelines of EVMs but small rigging can't be ruled out given the level of corruption in every office.Ours is a multi-party political system where winning candidate can be declared even by one vote and this causes a great concern, where a losing candidate can't do a verification as he can do with paper ballot.


Basis of democracy
doubt can't be,
but transparency.

It is the trust and belief of people in the democracy and its systems that makes democracy so universal in nature and if this trust is broken by any means it must be established by coming out fully transparent.


In recent time some headlines has appears in newspaper as follows.....

After defeat, Cong alleges EVM tampering in Guj civic polls

Advani has doubts about EVM, wants ballot papers back 

this is the point i was mentioned above. So, what should be done to address this problem?

Let's first start with knowing the EVM properly

 

Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) are Commercial organizations, which make and distribute EVMs. EVMs can cater to a maximum of 64 candidates.In case the number of contesting candidates goes beyond 64 in any constituency, EVMs cannot be used in such a constituency  EVMs can record a maximum of 3840 votes. 


In the next post I will write how EC has planned for Bihar election and how it has minimized the concern.

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