The Indian Constitution begins with the words “We the people of India… thus affirming that the people of India are the true sovereign of the Nation.
But ‘we the people exercise this sovereign right only at the time of election by casting our vote to elect/select our representative by the process called election. Wherein the candidate who secures the highest number of votes is declared elected by a duly constituted Election Commission.
Therefore people’s right to vote is a constitutional right of the highest order as it’s an exercise of our sovereign function, accordingly, to ensure that each of our vote is counted correctly is a constitutional duty of utmost importance on the Election Commission. We the people may be in millions but the right is available to each and every one of the citizens and the duty is owed to each and every citizen by the Election Commission, collectively as well as individually.
The use of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) have cast some serious doubts about the fulfillment of my right, that my vote is counted correctly and rightly. The duty and responsibility is on the Election Commission to verify and ensure to the satisfaction of every voter that his or her vote is counted and there is absolutely no scope what so ever to tamper with the EVMs at any point of time. It is not enough that the Election Commission is satisfied. Its upon the Election Commission to ensure that such procedures and methods are used so that every voter is satisfied that his or her vote will be duly and correctly accounted for. The Courts might demand the Election Commission to reveal the techniques and procedures used for the counting of votes by the use of EVMs but satisfaction of its correctness has to be that of the voter, failing which the voter should be given the choice to choose EVMs or ballot paper.
Expenses, time delays or manpower requirement cannot and should not be an excuse for the exercise of the sovereign power by “we the people”
The Election Commission is duty bound to ensure this not to his personal satisfaction but to the satisfaction of each and every voter who is exercising his/her sovereign function.
Amongst all the doubts cast on the functions of the EVMs the recent report of ‘The Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE), a civil society group of retired judges, former civil servants, university professors, senior journalists and activists, on Saturday, January 30, on the ‘fallibility’ or ‘vulnerability’ of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) and that EVM voting should abide by principles of democracy is crucial for Indian Democracy’s survival
The Citizens’ Commission on Elections (CCE) was chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Madan Lokur. The eight-member committee comprised former CIC Wajahat Habibullah, former Madras high court Judge, Justice Hari Paranthaman, economist Arun Kumar, civil society activist John Dayal, senior journalist Pamela Philipose, and Dr Subhashis Banerjee, professor of computer science at IIT Delhi.
The report has cast serious doubts on the electorate as to the genuine and truthful recording and counting of votes by the use of these EVMs
The Commission had insisted on absolute transparency while facilitating voters’ right to choose a candidate of their choice and in ensuring that this is faithfully reflected in the counting process, without the slightest deviation whatsoever. The civil society group believe that there should absolutely be no scope for error or misrepresentation of the elector’s choice. The Commission “In the recent has pointed out that in recent years India’s democracy has been called into question by international watchdogs. In such a condition, to have a free and fair election, the electorate must verify their votes as people are sovereign in this Republic.
The key concerns & suggestions highlighted in the commission’s report are:
End-to-end verifiability: To ensure independence between software and hardware, end-to-end verifiable systems with provable guarantees of correctness must be introduced and the ECI must declare its publicly-verifiable guarantees against spurious vote injections.
Possibility of hacking: If the correctness of an EVM cannot be established then it is practically impossible to predict whether an EVM can be hacked or not.
Audit: There must be a post-election audit of the EVM counts against manual counting of the VVPAT slips.
Counting: There must be a stringent audit of the electronic vote count before the results are declared. The audit should not be based on ad hoc methods but by counting a statistically significant sample of the VVPAT slips according to rigorous and well-established statistical audit techniques.
It is clear that the present system of the use of EVMs does not a guarantee that each and every vote is properly counted and accounted for in the election process.
The ECI has a constitutional duty to ensure proper tamper proof system of counting of votes.
There is need to introduce a system of unique identity of each and every EVM, used in each election by a system of verifiable bar coding , or QR Code for each elections such that these bar codes are verified openly at the starting of voting and at the time of counting to ensure that no fake EVMs are Introduced clandestinely midway in the process’
Its also important that every EVM has a time record system for each vote cast, i.e. the exact time when a particular vote is caste and that such time is mentioned in the Paper trials (VVPAT slip).
It is also necessary that the paper trials are printed out in such a way that the voter is able to physically receive the same and then drop the same into a ballot box after such verification, rather than the process being automatic. The paper trials, VVPAT slip also should have the time and the unique identity of the EVM printed on it.
It should be ensured that in every constituency at least 50 per cent of the EVMs paper trial should be counted and matched with EVMs count, if there is more than 10 present error election in such constituencies to be countermanded. Though it might be laborious remember, we had physical ballot paper counting earlier and many countries are even now using ballot paper method, because of the lack of fool proof methods in the use of EVMs.
If the Government in power and the ECI wants to ensure that democracy survives in India, this is the barest minimum responsibility they owe to the Nation.