NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India is today holding a press conference to announce the dates of its ‘EVM Challenge’ and to offer a live demonstration of its Electronic Voting Machines and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines.
The event will see the Election Commission exhibiting a four-minute short film on the features of its EVMs. Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi will deliver a statement, which will be followed by a round of questions and answers.
Today’s live demo comes amid allegations raised by the Opposition that the EC’s EVMs are vulnerable to hacking and tampering. The claims first emerged after the recent Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, which saw the Bharatiya Janata Party romping home with a huge win.
From Congress to the Aam Aadmi Party, several leaders from Opposition parties, including Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, have raised concerns over the trustworthiness of the country’s voting machines.
The Election Commission has maintained that its machines are tamper-proof but amid rising controversy on the issue, agreed to let political parties and experts attempt to prove the allegations at an ‘EVM Challenge’. Notably, the Commission has refused to use the term ‘hackathon’ to describe the challenge, contending that the word cannot be used since EVMs are not connected to the internet.
Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party held its own demonstration on EVM hacking in the Delhi Assembly. Party MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj brought in a dummy EVM and proceeded to show how the machine could be purportedly hacked to get it to cast votes for only one party/candidate.
During a recent all-party meeting called on the EVM issue, the Election Commission had also said that all future elections in India will make use of VVPAT machines. VVPAT machines allow voters to verify for whom they have cast their ballots.
The machine prints out a paper slip that displays information about which party/candidate a vote was for. Voters can view the slip but cannot take it home – the paper printout is collected in a box attached to the VVPAT machines. At the all-party meet, the EC also said during elections, it would count a certain percentage VVPAT print outs to tally the votes cast.
