At a time of AI and the Internet of Things powered by 5G network can we still hold that EVMs are stand-alone machines that are not hackable? The cat appears to be out of the bag not just because the election results of three Hindi heartland States have raised questions about safety of EVMs but also because the Elections Commission itself is said to be saying that it is tracking all its machines remotely through a software. This claim of the election commission cannot be seen with Nelson’s eye. It does raise questions about the safety of the EVMs. This is why it is important to raise the issue of EVMs again because if EVMs are trackable through software, they are part of the Internet of Things and are now vulnerable to hacking or digital manipulation. In fact if the Election Commission can track its EVMs then we can also ask for remote voting. This would allow us to vote from the comfort of our homes. Will this not open the Pandora’s Box? Ofcourse, the Election Commission will not give us the luxury of voting from home citing safety concerns.
The EVMs do not appear to be safe in the contest of developing AI. It does not seem to offer transparency and therefore, is not backed by voters’ confidence. The issue acquires gravity because there does not seem to be any visible steps taken to robust EVMs security so that all suspicions are brought to rest. The cost of failure in this context is the loss of democracy and hence mere declaration of the safety of EVMs is not enough. One wishes to see that EVMs safety is assured by employing the best practices and audits of cyber security that catch up with the growing AI and machine learning. With the coming of the Internet of Things, AI and machine learning systems, the security of EVMs has rung in confusion and scepticism among the voters. There is certainly good, bad and ugly use of AI and hence, we cannot say that our EVMs are fully tamper proof. Hence, the question is: Is the vote that we cast is counted the way we have casted?
The EVMs are not just the punching bags of the losing opposition. AI is already used to analyse public sentiments and forecast electoral behaviour of our people hence we cannot simply think that EVMs are safe in an age of AI. When EVMs were first introduced, may be the then chips and the motherboards were stand alone, but today the chips and the components of the motherboard are said to be multitasking. Several of them working in other contexts are secretly passing on our intimate information which is assembled and analysed and put into use by the Big Data tycoons. Therefore, we have the challenge to recast the safety of the EVMs again.
The digital democracy or digital electoral process does not appear to be safe at a time of AI, machine learning and Internet of Things. These disruptive technologies of the twenty-first century are threatening our democracy. These technologies are today integrated and we have AIoT. Will the EVMs become easy meat to these intelligent machines? Even if we grant that up to this point our EVMs were unhackable, can we still hold that they will be safe with the exponentially growing AI in the coming days? Will it not amount to idiotism to trust these machines in an age of 5G and rapidly growing AI? How can we protect the vulnerabilities of EVMs and assure that they are not decoded and preyed upon by highly potent AI?
AI, machine learning and the Internet of Things, being disruptive technologies are going to disrupt our democracy. This is why it may be wise to return to the ballot paper as the big tech countries have already done. India that is aspiring to be a Vishwa Guru cannot lag behind. Being the mother of democracy, our government and the Election Commission has the duty as well as responsibility to conduct free and fair elections. Because there is opacity that is being introduced by EVMs in the election process, it is an imperative arising out of democracy itself that gives the voter the right to know beyond any shadow of doubt what happens to one’s vote after one casts the same.
The right to know whether our vote reaches the intended destination is fundamental to the entire voting process. It is more basic than the efficiency of the speed of counting provided by the EVMs. Such counting efficiency can be achieved to some degree under the active supervision of the delegates of the candidates or by candidates themselves through machines like those that count cash. Our quest for speedy results cannot put our entire voting process in danger. There are also AI solutions for speeding up the counting of the ballot papers or even VVPAT slips through image processing and machine learning algorithms. The solution of the INDIA alliance is also quite in accordance with the transparency required for a democratic process like election. The alliance prefers a new protocol. It wants the ballot papers but if that is not possible, it proposes that the VVPAT printed coupon could be given to the voter which he/she can then put into the ballot box. This would give us two sources to get our number of votes and will be indicative of a free and fair process of holding elections.
In an age of AI, therefore, we cannot lose our simple intelligence and allow vested interest to hijack our democracy. Technologically highly advanced countries still consider ballot paper as the state-of-art voting technology. Although, we are told that voting with a ballot is a step backwards, it is the best technology that we have so far that assures secrecy, transparency and voters confidence. Now that EVMs have to content with machine learning and AI that grows with passing days, it appears to be best to rely on this time tested technology rather than put our democracy at risk. Democracy that is at risk is no democracy. It makes us vulnerable to vested interest both within and outside our country.
(Fr Victor Ferrao is an independent researcher attached to St Francis Xavier Church, Borim, Ponda)