{"id":40125,"date":"2024-04-12T18:38:33","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T14:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=40125"},"modified":"2024-04-12T18:38:33","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T14:38:33","slug":"elections-2024-how-the-worlds-largest-democracy-casts-its-ballots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/elections-2024-how-the-worlds-largest-democracy-casts-its-ballots\/","title":{"rendered":"Elections 2024: How the world\u2019s largest democracy casts its ballots"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

Since no technology can be entirely tamper-proof, each election outcome should undergo manual audit verification to ensure accuracy, regardless of the results<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

About 600 million Indian citizens are expected to cast their votes over a period of 39 days ending May 19, in the ongoing election for their country\u2019s parliament. There are roughly 900 million eligible voters, and the country has typically seen about two-thirds of them turn out to polling places.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have been working on the security of electronic voting systems for more than 15 years, and, along with other colleagues, have been interested in understanding how a nation can tally that many votes cast over such a long period. India uses a domestically designed and manufactured electronic voting machine \u2013 as many as 4 million of them at 1 million polling places, at least some in extremely remote locations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>A woman tests an electronic voting machine in India in advance of that country\u2019s national elections. AP Photo\/Manish Swarup<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The first version of the Indian electronic voting machine debuted in the state election in Kerala in 1982. Now they\u2019re used in elections throughout the country, which happen on different days in different areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

How does it work?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When a voter arrives at the polling place, she presents a photo ID and the poll officer checks that she is on the electoral roll. When it\u2019s her turn to vote, a polling official uses an electronic voting machine\u2019s control unit to unlock its balloting unit, ready to accept her vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

The balloting unit has a very simple user interface: a series of buttons with candidate names and symbols. To vote, the voter simply presses the button next to the candidate of her choice.<\/span><\/p>\n

After each button press, a printer prints out the voter\u2019s choice on paper and displays it to the voter for a few seconds, so the person may verify that the vote was recorded correctly. Then the paper is dropped into a locked storage box.<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole system runs on a battery, so it does not need to be plugged in.<\/span><\/p>\n

When it\u2019s time for the polling place to close at the end of the voting day, each electronic voting machine device and paper-record storage box is sealed with wax and tape bearing the signatures of representatives of the various candidates in that election, and stored under armed guard.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the election period is over and it\u2019s time to tally the votes, the electronic voting machines are brought out, the seals opened and the vote counts for each control unit are read out from its display board. Election workers hand-tally these individual machine totals to obtain the election results for each constituency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Security protections \u2013 and concerns<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Indian electronic voting machine primarily runs on specialized hardware and firmware, unlike the voting machines used in the U.S., which are software-intensive. It is intended for the single purpose of voting and specially designed for that, rather than relying on a standard operating system like Windows, which needs to be regularly updated to patch detected security vulnerabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each machine requires only a connection between a balloting unit and a control unit; there are no provisions to connect an electronic voting machine to a computer network, much less the internet \u2013 including wirelessly.<\/span><\/p>\n

This design does offer some protections against possible tampering with how votes are recorded and tallied. The Election Commission of India has repeatedly claimed that the electronic voting machines are tamper-proof. However, a scholarly study has demonstrated there are ways to rig the machines. In particular, the simplicity of the design allows for simple attacks, such as intercepting and modifying the signal carried over the machine\u2019s cable.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Election Commission has not made public any independent security evaluations, so it\u2019s unclear exactly what is \u2013 or isn\u2019t \u2013 possible. Parties that lose elections often suspect malfeasance and question the equipment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Manufacturing the machines<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As I and others have observed, when the machines are being made, there are a number of opportunities for someone to physically tamper with an electronic voting machine in ways that preelection device testing might not detect. The machines\u2019 software is designed, written and tested at two electronics companies owned by the government of India: Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited. The chips for the machines are manufactured outside India. In earlier versions of the machine, the chip manufacturer also wrote the machine code into the chip; today the electronics companies do it themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

At any time during manufacture, testing and maintenance, it may be possible to introduce counterfeit chips or swap out other components that could let hackers alter the results.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Election Commission of India argues that any manipulation or error would be detected because the electronic voting machine is tested frequently and candidate representatives have opportunities to participate in mock elections immediately before a machine is used in a real election. However, it is possible to make changes that will not be detected. Testing can reveal only some problems, and the absence of problems during testing does not mean that problems do not exist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Auditing the machines\u2019 results<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There is, however, a mechanism for detecting attacks \u2013 that printed-out paper bearing the vote and stored securely with the electronic equipment. A 2013 Supreme Court directive asked the Election Commission to create that process to protect the integrity of the balloting process.<\/span><\/p>\n

In each constituency, five electronic voting machines will have their results audited by comparing a manual count of the printouts with the electronic tallies. (This means about 1% or 2% of each constituency\u2019s machines will be tested.) Opposition parties have asked the Supreme Court to order audits of half of all electronic voting machines, but that may not happen with this year\u2019s election.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the electronic voting machine system is useful and functional, officials and observers shouldn\u2019t assume there\u2019s no way to tamper with the results. The Election Commission should certainly continue to improve testing and provide public reports of independent testing. However, because no technology can be tamper-proof, each election outcome should be verified by a manual audit, to ensure that the results are correct, whatever they may be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Poorvi Vora<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Professor of Computer Science,
\nGeorge Washington University<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 12 April 2024<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since no technology can be entirely tamper-proof, each election outcome should undergo manual audit verification to ensure accuracy, regardless of the results<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":40126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25],"tags":[216,45013,397,45014,13148,165,45015,45016,2242],"class_list":["post-40125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-democracy","tag-e-voting","tag-elections","tag-electronic-voting","tag-global-perspectives","tag-india","tag-india-elections","tag-india-elections-2019","tag-voting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/A-woman-tests-an-electronic.jpg?fit=1200%2C824&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-arb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}