From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Indian voting machines
Indian voting machines
The EVMs are now manufactured by the above two un-
dertakings.
EVMs were first used in 1982 in the by-election to
North Paravur Assembly Constituency of Kerala for a lim-
ited number of polling stations (50 polling stations). [1]
Technology
Indian voting machines use a two-piece system with a
balloting unit presenting the voter with a button (mo-
mentary switch) for each choice connected by a cable to
an electronic ballot box.
An EVM consists of two units:
Balloting Unit(left) , control unit (right) • Control Unit
• Balloting Unit
The two units are joined by a five-meter cable. The Con-
trol Unit is with the Presiding Officer or a Polling Officer
and the Balloting Unit is placed inside the voting com-
partment. Instead of issuing a ballot paper, the Polling
Officer in-charge of the Control Unit will press the Ballot
Button. This will enable the voter to cast his vote by
pressing the blue button on the Balloting Unit against the
candidate and symbol of his choice.
The controller used in EVMs has its operating pro-
gram etched permanently in silicon at the time of man-
ufacturing by the manufacturer. No one (including the
manufacturer) can change the program once the con-
troller is manufactured.
Further details regarding this unit are available at:
http://www.bel-India.com/BELWebsite/images/
EVM_Features.pdf
Features
control unit • EVMs are powered by an ordinary 6 volt alkaline
battery manufactured by Bharat Electronics Ltd.,
Electronic Voting Machines ("EVM") are being used in In- Bangalore and Electronic Corporation of India Ltd.,
dian General and State Elections to implement electron- Hyderabad. This design enables the use of EVMs
ic voting in part from 1999 elections and in total since throughout the country without interruptions
2002 elections. The EVMs reduce the time in both casting because several parts of India do not have power
a vote and declaring the results compared to the old pa- supply and/or erratic power supply.
per ballot system. • Currently, an EVM can record a maximum of 3840
votes, which is sufficient for a polling station as they
History typically have no more than 1400 voters assigned.
• Currently, an EVM can cater to a maximum of 64
The EVMs were devised and designed by Election Com- candidates. There is provision for 16 candidates in a
mission of India in collaboration with two Public Sector Balloting Unit. If the total number of candidates
undertakings viz., Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore exceeds 16, a second Balloting Unit can be linked
and Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad. parallel to the first Balloting Unit and so on till a
maximum of 4 units and 64 candidates. The
1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Indian voting machines
conventional ballot paper/box method of polling is order remain safe in the memory of the Control Unit
used if the number of candidates exceeds 64. and it is not necessary to start the poll from the
• It is not possible to vote more than once by pressing beginning.
the button again and again. As soon as a particular • The Control Unit can store the result in its memory
button on the Balloting Unit is pressed, the vote is for 10 years and even more. The battery is required
recorded for that particular candidate and the only to activate the EVMs at the time of polling and
machine gets locked. Even if one presses that button counting. As soon as the polling is over, the battery
further or any other button, no further vote will be can be switched off and this will be required to be
recorded. This way the EVMs ensure the principle of switched on only at the time of counting. The
"one person, one vote". battery can be removed as soon as the result is taken
• The EVMs cannot be pre-programmed to favour a and can be kept separately. Therefore, there is no
party or a candidate because the order in which the question of battery leaking or otherwise damaging
name of a candidate/party appears on the balloting EVMs. Even when the battery is removed the
unit depends on the order of filing of nominations memory in the microchip remains intact. If the Court
and validity of the candidature, this sequence cannot orders a recount, the Control Unit can be reactivated
be predicted in advance. Further, the selection of by fixing the battery and it will display the result
EVMs for polling stations is randomized by computer stored in the memory.
selection preventing the advance knowledge of • Invalid votes can be avoided by use of EVMs. When
assignment of specific EVMs to polling stations. ballot system was used in India, the number of
invalid votes was more than the winning margin
Benefits between the candidates in every general elections.
With EVMs, there are no invalid votes.[citation needed]
• The cost per EVM (One Control Unit, one Balloting • Since EVMs work on a 6-volt battery, there is
Unit and one battery) was Rs.5,500/- at the time the absolutely no risk of any voter getting an electric
machines were purchased in 1989-90. Even though shock.
the initial investment was somewhat heavy, it was
more than neutralised by the savings in the matter
of production and printing of ballot papers in lakhs,
Usage of an EVM
their transportation, storage etc., and the substantial If the number of candidates is less than the maximum ca-
reduction in the counting staff and the renumeration pacity of the EVM, the extra panels are masked before
paid to them. use.
• It will be easier to transport the EVMs compared to Before the commencement of the polling process, the
ballot boxes as EVMs are lighter, portable and come Presiding Officer demonstrates to the polling agents pre-
with polypropylene carrying cases. sent that there are no hidden votes already recorded in
• The vote-counting is very fast and the result can be the machine by pressing the ’Result’ button. Then he or
declared within 2 to 3 hours as compared to 30–40 she conducts a mock poll by asking the polling agents to
hours, on an average, under the ballot-paper system. record their votes and presses the result button to sat-
• In countries like India, where illiteracy is still a isfy them that the result shown is strictly according to
factor, illiterate people find EVMs easier than ballot the choice recorded by them. Finally the clear button is
paper system, where one has to put the voting stamp pressed to clear the result of the mock poll and the unit is
on the symbol of the candidate of his/her choice, sealed before sending it to the respective polling booths.
fold it first vertically and then horizontally, and put (Not sure about this part: is this testing/sealing done at a
it into the ballot box. In EVMs, the voter has to Central/State level or at a Polling Booth level?)
simply press the blue button against the candidate Each Control Unit has a unique ID Number, which is
and symbol of his choice and the vote is recorded. painted on each unit with a permanent marker. This ID
• Bogus voting can be greatly reduced by the use of Number will be allowed to be noted by the Polling Agents
EVMs. In case of ballot paper system, a bogus voter and will also be recorded in a Register maintained for
can stuff thousands of bogus ballot papers inside the the purpose by the Returning Officer. The address tag at-
ballot box. But, an EVM is programmed to record tached to the Control Unit also will indicate this ID Num-
only five votes in a minute. This will frustrate the ber. This is to avoid replacement of a genuine EVM by an-
bogus voters. Further, the maximum number of other one.
votes that can be cast in a single EVM is 3840. As soon as the voter presses the ’blue button’ against
• If an EVM goes out-of-order then, the Election the candidate and symbol of his choice, a tiny lamp on
Officer, in-charge of the polling booth, can replace the left side of the symbol glows red and simultaneously
the defunct EVM with a spare EVM. The votes a long beep sound is heard. Thus, there is both audio and
recorded until the stage when the EVM went out of
2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Indian voting machines
visual indications for the voter to be assured that his vote 2010. This conference received good response and the
has been recorded. conclusion was that the Election Commission of India was
As soon as the last voter has voted, the Polling Officer shirking it’s responsibility on the transparency in the
in-charge of the Control Unit will press the ’Close’ But- working of the EVMs.
ton. Thereafter, the EVM will not accept any votes. Fur- Dr. Subramanian Swamy Writ Petition challenging
ther, after the close of poll, the Balloting Unit is discon- the use of EVMs in the present form is pending in the Del-
nected from the Control Unit and kept separately. Votes hi High Court.
can be recorded only through the Balloting Unit. Again In April 2010, an independent security analysis[3] was
the Presiding officer, at the close of the poll, will hand released by a research team led by Hari Prasad, Rop
over to each polling agent present an account of votes Gonggrijp, and J. Alex Halderman. The study included
recorded. At the time of counting of votes, the total will video demonstrates[4] of two attacks that the researchers
be tallied with this account and if there is any discrepan- carried out on a real EVM, as well as descriptions of sev-
cy, this will be pointed out by the Counting Agents. eral other potential vulnerabilities. One demonstration
During the counting of votes, the results are dis- attack was based on replacing the part inside the control
played by pressing the ’Result’ button. There are two unit that actually displays the candidates’ vote totals.
safeguards to prevent the ’Result’ button from being The study showed how a substitute, "dishonest" part
pressed before the counting of votes officially begins. (a) could output fraudulent election results. The second
This button cannot be pressed till the ’Close’ button is demonstration attack used a small clip-on device to ma-
pressed by the Polling Officer in-charge at the end of the nipulate the vote storage memory inside the machine. In
voting process in the polling booth. (b) This button is hid- order to mitigate these threat, the researchers suggest
den and sealed; this can be broken only at the counting moving to a voting system that provides greater trans-
center in the presence of designated officials. parency, such as paper ballots, precinct count optical
scan, or a voter verified paper audit trail, since, in any
Limitations of electronic voting of these systems, skeptical voters could, in principle, ob-
serve the physical counting process to gain confidence
A candidate can know how many people from a polling that the outcome is fair.
station voted for him. For example, in Indian general But Election Commission of India points out that for
elections, 2004; the day after the election results were such tampering of the EVMs, one needs physical access to
declared, The Times of India, Mumbai carried statistics EVMs, and pretty high tech skills are required. Given that
about which areas in Mumbai voted for which candidate. EVMs are stored under strict security which can be mon-
People from Kandivali gave more votes to Govinda, while itored by candidates or their agents all the time, its im-
people from Borivali polled more votes for his opponent possible to gain physical access to the machines. Plus, to
Ram Naik. This is a significant issue particularly if lop- impact the results of an election, hundreds to thousands
sided votes for/against a candidate are cast in individual of machines will be needed to tamper with, which is al-
polling stations. The Election Commission of India has most impossible given the hi-tech & time consuming na-
stated that the manufacturers of the EVMs have devel- ture of the tampering process. [5] [6]
oped a ’Totaliser’ unit which can connect several Ballot-
ing Units and would display only the overall results from
an Assembly or a Lok Sabha constituency instead of votes
See also
from individual polling stations.[2] • Voting machine
The control units do not electronically transmit their • None of the above
results back the Election Commission, even though a sim-
ple and unconditionally secure protocol for doing this
exists. The Indian EVMs are purposely designed as stand-
References
alone units to prevent any intrusion during electronic [1] "Electronic Voting Machine,Chapter 39,Reference
transmission of results. Instead, the EVMs are collected handbook, Election commission of India".
in counting booths and tallied on the assigned counting Pib.nic.in. http://pib.nic.in/elections2009/.
day(s) in the presence of polling agents of the candidates. Retrieved 2010-09-01.
[2] "Know Your Electronic Voting Machine" (PDF).
http://pib.nic.in/elections2009/volume1/
Security Problems Chap-39.pdf. Retrieved 2010-09-01.
An international conference on the Indian EVMs and it’s [3] Scott Wolchok, Eric Wustrow, J. Alex Halderman,
tamperability of the said machines was held under the Hari K. Prasad, Arun Kankipati, Sai Krishna
Chairmanship of Dr. Subramanian Swamy, President of Sakhamuri, Vasavya Yagati, and Rop Gonggrijp
the Janata Party and former Union Cabinet Minister for (October 2010). "Security Analysis of India’s
Law, Commerce and Justice at Chennai on 13 February Electronic Voting Machines" (PDF). 17th ACM
3
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Indian voting machines
Conference on Computer and Communications • Electronic Voting Machine: An Electronic Marvel.
Security. http://www.cse.umich.edu/~jhalderm/ Indian-Elections.com Article accessed 14 May 2006.
pub/papers/evm-ccs10.pdf. • Gearing up for India’s Electronic Election. BBC
[4] IndiaEVM.org Security Analysis of India’s Article dated 27 February 2004, accessed 14 May 2006.
Electronic Voting Machines • Global lessons in e-voting News.com Article dated 30
[5] http://www.indianexpress.com/news/evms- September 2004, accessed 14 May 2006.
cannot-be-tampered-k-j-rao/499148/ • A voting revolution in India? Businessweek Article
[6] http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/ dated 19 April 2004, accessed 14 May 2006.
article562910.ece • Indian elections enter final phase. Guardian Article
dated 10 May 2004, accessed 14 May 2006.
External links • Article related to voting by ballot paper in The New
York Times dated 29 December 1984, accessed 14 May
• Presentations on EVM at the Election Commission of 2006.
India website • Indian EVM compared with Diebold. Techaos blog
• FAQ on EVM used by the Election Commission of dated 13 May 2004, accessed 3 September 2006.
India • http://brainstorms.in/?p=309 How do we vote in
• The Bombay Ballot: What the U.S. can learn from India with EVM.
India’s electronic voting machines. Slate.com Article
dated 29 September 2004, accessed 14 May 2006.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indian_voting_machines&oldid=468599441"
Categories:
• Science and technology in India
• Elections in India
• Electronic voting by country
• Election technology
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