Electronic voting in India

Introduction of EVMs have brought down the costs significantly, reduces the time of counting to enable faster announcement of results and eliminated fraudulent practices due to safety features such as security locking, limits to rate of voting per minute and verification of thumb impressions.

In 2011, the Supreme Court of India directed the Election Commission to include a paper trail to help confirm the reliable operation of EVMs.

[6][7] In the late 1970s, Election Commission of India sought a solution for the issues which resulted in the development of electronic voting machines (EVM).

The court stated the manner in which the orders were issued for the use of EVMs was unconstitutional and the usage of any alternate means would require to be specified under the law.

[11] An amendment to the Representation of the People Act, 1951 which allowed the usage of EVMs, was passed by the Parliament of India in December 1988 and came into force in March 1989.

[9][13] In March 1992, changes were made to the Conduction of Election Rules, 1961 by the Government of India to permit the usage of electronic voting.

In May 2001, EVMs were used in all constituencies for the state assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry and West Bengal.

In order to mitigate the issue, a totaliser was developed in 2008, which was connected to several EVM units and displayed only the overall results instead of votes from individual machines.

[15][16] After a consultation with the political parties in 2010, the Election Commission appointed an expert technical committee to study the feasibility of a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) in EVMs as a measure of transparency.

[17] The committee was tasked with examining the possibility of displaying a printed paper to a voter which consisted of the symbol of the party to which the vote was cast.

[19][20] In July 2011, trials were conducted at 175 polling booths in Ladakh, Thiruvananthapuram, Cherrapunjee, East Delhi and Jaisalmer to test the performance of the VVPAT system under various weather conditions.

[25][26][27] Following a directive of the Supreme Court on 8 October 2013, the Election Commission of India introduced VVPATs along with EVMs in a phased manner.

[28][29] In 2019, the Supreme Court further directed that a small percentage (2%) of the VVPATs to be verified to ensure the reliability before the final results were certified.

The ballot unit has an internal clock and a pre-programmed protocol by which it records every input-output event with a timestamp provided it is powered.

[38] The devices were designed to prevent fraud by limiting the number of new votes can be entered into the machine in a given time frame.

[44][45] Prior to the elections, the machines are randomly allocated to polling booths and sample checks are carried out to ensure working condition.

[56] Though the design, production and procurement was capital intensive, it has helped reduce the cost incurred on the printing of ballot papers, their transportation and storage and the counting staff and the remuneration paid to them.

[5] An independent study had also indicated that the voting by the economically weaker section have increased due to the ease of usage with EVMs.

In February 2010, an international conference held under the chairmanship of Subramanian Swamy blamed the Election Commission for shirking from its responsibility on proving the transparency of EVMs.

It suggested moving to a voting system that provides greater transparency such as paper ballots, precinct count optical scan, or a voter verified paper audit trail for skeptical voters to observe the physical counting process to gain confidence that the outcome is fair.

[61] A research from The Hindu shared similar concerns that the EVMs could be manipulated during manufacturing, storage during the non-election periods and service of the machines by authorised technicians.

[67] In January 2019, a self proclaimed cyber expert based in London claimed that the results can be manipulated by using low frequency signals.

[11][13][75] A PIL was filed in the Supreme Court in 2011 for directing the Election Commission to modify the EVMs to give a slip printed with the symbol of the party in whose favor the voter cast.

[76][77][78] On 17 January 2012, Delhi High Court in its ruling on Subramanian Swamy's writ petition challenging the use of EVMs in the present form asked the Election Commission to hold wider consultations with the executive, political parties and other stakeholders on the matter.