The controversial EVM tampering saga has reared up its head again and assumes greater significance now that General Elections are just a stone’s throw away. But the hype around the supposed expose and the expectations of new revelations turned out to be a damp squib. What most people are missing out is the difference between the questions “Can EVMs be tampered with?” and “Are elections rigged through EVM tampering?”.
Can EVMs be tampered with? Of course yes. Any human creation can be altered and manipulated by another human. Any electronic device can be manipulated, especially in these times of advanced sophisticated technology like WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC. Digital electronics is all about 0 and 1 and it doesn’t take much effort to manipulate 0 to 1 or vice versa. The Aam Aadmi Party had demonstrated how EVMs can be hacked in the Delhi assembly sometime back. So I was expecting that the new expose would reveal how elections can be rigged through EVM tampering but nothing more than allegations and accusations were forthcoming.
To understand how elections are rigged, we need to learn about the background of elections and voting itself. Since these are sensitive times in India with respect to talking anything about elections and political parties, let me demonstrate this through the US political and electoral system. The US has a bipartisan political system so electoral system is clearly demarcated between Republicans and Democrats. There are essentially 3 types of voters, the core Republican voters, the core Democrat voters and the fence sitters.
The core voters will always vote for the parties they vouch for. This leaves out the fence sitters, which forms the biggest voter group. Election propaganda, rallies, posters, banners, all of those are to sway the votes of the fence sitters. In the context of our country, this is where the religious diversity and caste-based society in India helps political parties. Vote bank politics ensures that people vote for political leaders based on religion and caste, thereby reducing the size of the population of fence sitters.
Tampering EVMs to rig elections is no easy task. Let us take the example of an election between candidates A and B of two political parties and let us assume that the election has been rigged for B’s victory. Out of the total voting population in the constituency, let the number of people who voted in the election be ‘n’. For either A or B to win, one of them has to win more than 1/2 of ‘n’. There are two ways to rig the election in favor of B. Either keep transferring every vote getting polled for A to B during polling or after the election is completed, transfer all the votes of A to B. Both the situations will expose the fact that the election was rigged because A would have got no votes.
Let’s make this a little more complex. Let’s assume that A and B each have 20% of core voters. That leaves 60% of fence sitters. Both A and B need to get at least 30% of the votes of fence sitters to stay in the race. One way is to execute the rigging during the time of voting and transfer a certain amount of votes of A to B so that B crosses the 50% mark without arousing any suspicion. The other way is to first complete the poll and after the EVMs are locked in the strong rooms, remotely transfer a certain number of votes of A to B.
The first method requires complex understanding of mindset of the voters and voting patterns to determine the possible difference between votes getting polled for A and B. But if an EVM is rigged to transfer votes of A to B as voting takes place, it is possible only if the EVM is rigged to be activated at certain times to transfer a certain number of votes – this means continuous monitoring of voting pattern throughout the voting period and short intervals of vote transfer. The other method is by bulk transfer of votes remotely after voting is completed. To execute this method, the number of votes A and B have polled has be counted first. But the problem is, EVMs will be turned off in the strong rooms. So would there be a way to access EVMs even when they are turned off? Both require EVMs to be rigged with sophisticated electronic devices. This is where the mystery lies, how the vote transfer is done subtly and this is what needs to be exposed.
How to find out if an election is rigged is also complex. If counting is done immediately after the voting period is completed, it would eliminate the possibility of bulk vote transfer. But real time transfer of votes would be impossible to be found out other than by manually examining the EVMs. What makes detecting rigged EVMs more difficult is that not every EVM would be manipulated. Just enough votes need to be swung in the favor of one party to tilt the election results in its favor. In India, some states are bigger than others and consequently elect more representatives to the Parliament. So rigging of EVMs will also be based on a particular strategy. There are two ways voting through EVMs could be manipulated. One is by using the existing technology of EVMs or by rigging the electronic circuitry of EVMs.
It is highly improbable that in the thousands of EVMs which will come to play in elections, some EVMs will have different electronic circuits especially if the contract for manufacturing EVMs has been given to a single company unless rigged EVMs manufactured by another company are used to replace some of the existing ones. So rigging has to be done by leveraging the existing EVM technology.
The question to be asked though is, who would want EVMs to be rigged? Such a complex process would involve time, effort and humongous expenses. The political parties and their leaders neither have the wherewithal nor the need to manipulate election results. Behind their exterior enmity and posturing in public view, in the shadows exists their bonhomie across party lines. One of Modi’s poll promises in 2014 was to arrest Robert Vadra as soon as he becomes the PM, but in the last 5 years not a single case against him has progressed.
Only the corporate sector can afford to execute and manage something of this complexity and magnitude. But what will they gain out of it? Corporate funding for elections is enormous so what would be their plight if the leaders they splurge their money on are voted out by the people? So they have to ensure that the party and the political leaders they are backing come into power. Only then can they use their political clout on the civil administration to move their files and extend their business empire into foreign shores. When I see different bigwig corporate companies backing different political parties I am tempted to wonder if elections have become the corporate battleground to jostle for dominance and power and people’s privilege of being voters is a thing of the past.
The ultimate objective of any crime investigation is to find the motive of the crime and the question asked is ‘why’. The naysayers of EVMs should stop clamoring for replacing EVMs with ballot boxes without being able to prove conclusively that EVMs are being manipulated. Rather they should first dig into its roots and find the ‘why’ or the objective of EVM manipulation which in turn would reveal all other secrets behind it.
The post Everything You Need To Know About The Age-Old EVM Rigging Saga appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.