Can EVM kill our democracy?

Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh have ascribed their partyrsquos defeat in Madhya Pradesh to the Electronic Voting Machine EVM bolstering persistent doubts over its efficacy They are not alone in doing so leaders from L K Advani to Mayawati Akhilesh Yadav to Arvind Kejriwal have confessed to the EVM being their bugbearmdashbut alas only after being beaten black and blue in the electionsToday express doubts about the EVM to a BJP leader and she will likely say ldquoYou hate Narendra Modirdquo The victorious think the EVM can do no wrongThe EVM does bewilder though mimicking at times the computing skills of a Class I student In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when EVMs were deployed across India as many as 373 constituencies reported a mismatch between the votes polled and votes counted The highest mismatch was of 18331 votes Not only did the Election Commission of India ECI refuse to respond to queries about the discrepancies it removed the election data from its websiteThe ECIrsquos conduct prompted the Citizensrsquo Commission on Elections CCE under former Supreme Court judge Madan Lokur to prepare a report on EVMs and VVPAT or Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail in 2020 The report was written by Subhashis Banerjee then professor of computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi with inputs from other Commission members After reading the CCE report I spoke to Banerjee Here is a summary of our discussionAn EVM is considered secure when it allows the voter to cast hisher vote as she intended when the vote is registered as she cast and when the vote is counted as registered Thus you may intend to vote for X and press the button on the ballot unit with Xrsquos symbol but the vote could get cast for Y Then you may have succeeded casting your vote for X but it could get registered for Y Or your vote may be registered for X but get added to Yrsquos tallyThere is no guarantee against manipulation taking place at any of the three steps American computer scientist Rebecca Mercuri in 1992 argued theoretically that no EVM can ever be proved to be hackproof She suggested attaching a VVPAT and crosschecking the EVM count with the VVPAT count as one way of verifying that the EVM is functioning as intendedThe EVMVVPAT system was introduced in 2019 in all constituencies in India The possibility of rigging cannot be ruled out not just by changing the hard disk of the EVMVVPATrsquos control unit as the Aam Aadmi Party famously demonstrated in 2017mdashit is in fact too cumbersome a process to go undetected The possibilities of ldquosidechannelrdquo hacking also exist that is using ultrasound electromagnetic waves etc to alter say the votes registered for X to be counted for Y Or it could be used to stuff votes for Y even though these were not polledCould this explain the discrepancy between the votes polled and votes counted in 2019 Well Even major international CPU manufacturers have struggled to design products impenetrable by sidechannel hackingDoubts over the EVM persist also because the ECI refuses to publicly disclose the ldquosource coderdquo or a set of instructions written in a computer language ordering the electronic machine to function in sync with actions carried out as for instance casting and registering the vote for X when you pressed the button with hisher election symbol Ideally the ECI should have disclosed the source code and asked the public to detect loopholes for plugging themThe ECIrsquos reluctance resembles that of examiners who are wary of showing examination papers they have graded to students lest their mistakes are detectedThere are suggestions to return to the system of stamping the ballot paper and dropping it into the ballot box Here you are sure your vote has been cast as intended But you cannot be sure it would be counted as cast for ballot boxes can be substituted stuffed or looted Papers also mean chopping wood a nono in these days of alarm over global warmingBanerjee says the system of EVMVVPAT is superior to that of the pure paper ballots for the former provides for twotrack verificationTake the EVM tally and match it with the number of VVPAT slips Not just VVPAT slips of five EVMs in every Assembly constituency as is done in India but of a statistically significant numberThe only way to address the disquiet over the EVM is to count all VVPAT slips in each constituency Banerjee suggests until it becomes possible to declare the correct winner with high confidence The exact number of slips required to be counted will depend on the winning margin The absolutely certain way of ascertaining the winner is thismdashif the EVM count for X were to show she has won by 500 votes then count VVPAT slips until 499 of those are left ruling out hisher defeat This is an established process called RiskLimiting Audit Such a system means you cannot have the thrill of knowing the results on the day of the counting Rephrase that profound warning to read Speed thrills but can kill democracyThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper