See
more at:
http://kohram.in/ten-reasons-for-banning-indian-evms/#sthash.5sue6t7S.dpuf
youtube id=”ZlCOj1dElDY” width=”620″ height=”360″ -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlCOj1dElDY

This
country’s EVMs are Vulnerable to Fraud-Contrary to claims by our
country,s election authorities, the paperless electronic voting systems
used in India suffer from significant vulnerabilities. Even brief access
to the machines could allow criminals to alter election results. 



In
this video, we demonstrate two kinds of attacks against a real Indian
EVM. One attack involves replacing a small part of the machine with a
look-alike component that can be silently instructed to steal a
percentage of the votes in favor of a chosen candidate. These
instructions can be sent wirelessly from a mobile phone. Another attack
uses a pocket-sized device to change the votes stored in the EVM between
the election and the public counting session, which in India can be
weeks later.

These attacks are neither complicated nor
difficult to perform, but they would be hard to detect or defend
against. The best way to prevent them is to count votes using paper
ballots that voters can see.
indiaEVM.org
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br2Mjt1BecI - EVMs Can Be
Tampered - Says Net India - Net India company says that the Electronic
Voting Machines EVMs which are used in polling stations can be tampered
in favor of the candidates. Watch this to find out more…..To watch
live news, videos subscribe to CVR News @
https://www.youtube.com/user/CVRNewsO…-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1xov8mrLZc -



EVM in INDIA
REALITY EXPOSED by Dr Subramanian
Swamyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3THfIvvxPY - EVMs can be tampered,
experts say - Electronic voting machines could be easily tampered to
manipulate elections results, a group of foreign experts said at a
seminar in Dhaka on Tuesday. A standing committee member of the main
opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Abdul Moyeen Khan, in the
seminar said that the party would make some prototypes of the EVMs the
Election Commission made to show the people how the device could be
tampered.


Non-governmental organisation Centre
for Sustainable Development organised the seminar, ‘Electronic voting
machines: use and abuse,’ at the Lake Shore hotel in the city. The
organisation’s secretary general Mahfuzullah conducted the seminar and
its president Anwar Hashim, also a former ambassador, presided over the
programme. Computer science professor in the University of California
Mathew Allen Bishop, senior software architect of Yahoo in India
Shashank Shekhar and research and development director of Hewlett
Packard of the United States Shawn Islam made presentation  in the
seminar highlighting how EVMs could be tampered. All the three experts
said the EVMs could be tampered in several ways in a short span of time
to manipulate the elections results in favour of a certain candidate if
the manipulators would get physical access to EVMs. Citing an example of
the flaws of the EVM used in the United States and in other parts of
the world, Bishop said the EVMs, electronic devices which need software
to function, could be easily tampered. Bishop, however, asked the
authorities concerned to look into certain issues before using EVMs.
‘When votes are counted, how do you know that the button pushed to vote
for scales on the ballot unit is in fact counted as a vote for scales?’
he said. Bishop also said, ‘How do you know that the software is
correct? There are no bugs that affect the vote counting? 




How do you know that the software on the EPROM chip is the version that is supposed to be used? There was no malware?’

He
said the security of the software running the EVM must be part of the
inbuilt design of the device. Earlier, Shawn Islam,m a
Bangladeshi-American, demonstrated how a vote cast for a candidate could
be stored for the candidate the voter did not vote for through software
manipulation effected beforehand. Both of the experts said that there
be a system of paper trail of the votes cast so that the voters could
see that their votes were stored for the candidate they voted for.’But,’
Shawn Islam added, ‘the EVMs developed by Bangladesh do not have any
option to add the paper trail system.’ He claimed that the EVM developed
in Bangladesh have plenty of problems. Shashank said that there was no
electronic device in the world which could not be tampered. All of the
experts said that the device must be tested by a third party before its
use.

In reply to a question whether the EVM
can be manipulated with remote control devise without physical
intervention once EVMs are tested and certified by the experts of the
political parties just before the elections, Shawn said, ‘You must have
physical interventions to manipulate it if the EVM does not belong to
any wireless network.’


When a reporter
asked Abdul Moyeen Khan whether the BNP would accept it if EVMs were
tested by their experts, the BNP leader parried the answer saying that
the party would develop some EVM prototypes to show how they could be
tampered.

Representatives from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party,
including its acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the
chairperson’s advisers Iqbal Hasan Mahmud, Sabiuddin Ahmed, Ruhal Alam
and opposition chief whip Zainul Abdin Farroque, attended. Speaking on
the occasion, former Dhaka University vice-chancellor Moniruzzaman Mia,
BRAC University professor Piash Karim and Sushaner Janya Nagarik
secretary Badiul Alam Majumder stressed the need for building trust
among political parties before introducing any new device in the
elections process.The country’s two major political camps are now at
loggerheads over the introduction of EVMs in the next polls. The ruling
Awami League-led alliance said that it would extend all cooperation to
the E C in using EVMs in the next general elections while the opposition
Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance vowed to resist the
move.Attachments area- Preview YouTube video India’s EVMs are Vulnerable
to Fraud 
-Preview YouTube video EVMs Can Be Tampered - Says Net India
Preview YouTube video EVM in INDIA REALITY EXPOSED by Dr Subramanian
Swamy.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-05-20/news/27589262_1_voting-machines-display-board-hack


American scientists ‘hack’ into Indian voting machines

http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,195328/printable.html

Security Analysis of India’s Electronic Voting Machines

Abstract:
Elections in India are conducted almost exclusively using electronic
voting machines developed over the past two decades by a pair of
government-owned companies. These devices, known in India as EVMs, have
been praised for their simple design, ease of use, and reliability, but
recently they have also been criticized because of widespread reports of
election irregularities. Despite this criticism, many details of the
machines’ design have never been publicly disclosed, and they have not
been subjected to a rigorous, independent security evaluation. In this
paper, we present a security analysis of a real Indian EVM obtained from
an anonymous source. We describe the machine’s design and operation in
detail, and we evaluate its security, in light of relevant election
procedures. We conclude that in spite of the machine’s simplicity and
minimal trusted computing base, it is vulnerable to serious attacks that
can alter election results and violate the secrecy of the ballot. We
demonstrate two attacks, implemented using custom hardware, which could
be carried out by dishonest election insiders or other criminals with
only brief physical access to the machines. This case study contains
important lessons for Indian elections and for electronic voting
security more generally.

http://indiaevm.org/paper.html

Full technical paper at http://indiaevm.org/evm_tr2010.pdf

Excerpt:
Conclusions

Despite
elaborate safeguards, India’s EVMs are vulnerable to serious attacks.
Dishonest insiders or other criminals with physical access to the
machines at any time before ballots are counted can insert malicious
hardware that can steal votes for the lifetime of the machines.
Attackers with physical access between voting and counting can
arbitrarily change vote totals and can learn which candidate each voter
selected. These problems are deep-rooted. The design of India’s EVMs
relies entirely on the physical security of the machines and the
integrity of election insiders. This seems to negate many of the
security benefits of using electronic voting in the first place. The
technology’s promise was that attacks on the ballot box and dishonesty
in the counting process would be more difficult. Yet we find that such
attacks remain possible, while being more difficult to detect.

It
is highly doubtful that these problems could be remedied by simple
upgrades to the existing EVMs or election procedures. Merely making the
attacks we have demonstrated more difficult will not fix the fundamental
problem: India’s EVMs do not provide transparency, so voters and
election officials have no reason for confidence that the machines are
behaving honestly.

India should carefully reconsider how to
achieve a secure and transparent voting system that is suitable to its
national values and requirements. One option that has been adopted in
other countries is to use a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT),
which combines an electronic record stored in a DRE with a paper vote
record that can be audited by hand [43]. Existing EVMs do not have
updatable software, but it would be possible to add a VVPAT by
interposing on the cable between the control unit and the ballot unit.
Another
option is precinct-count optical scan (PCOS) voting, where
voters fill out paper ballots that are scanned by a voting machine at
the polling station before being placed in a ballot box. Attacking
either of these systems would require tampering with both the paper
records and the electronic records, provided that routine audits are
performed to make sure these redundant sets of records agree [14]. A
third option is to return to simple paper ballots. Despite all of their
known weaknesses, simple paper ballots provide a high degree of
transparency, so fraud that does occur will be more likely to be
detected.

Using EVMs in India may have seemed like a good idea
when the machines were introduced in the 1980s, but science’s
understanding of electronic voting security—and of attacks against
it—has progressed dramatically since then, and other technologically
advanced countries have adopted and then abandoned EVM-style voting. Now
that we understand what technology can and cannot do, any new solutions
to the very real problems election officials face must address the
problems, not merely hide them from sight.

EVMs are not foolproof, says computer scientist
 
April 23rd, 2010
DC Correspondent, Kumar Chellappan
 
Picking
holes. A low-budget adversary armed with a small instrument can read
out votes cast, suppress the votes of one or several voters, and even
delete all the votes.
 
April 22: Electronic voting machines are
not as tamper-proof as the Election Commission of India would like us to
believe, going by the research of an Israeli comuter scientist who has
found flaws in the most advanced EVMs in the world.

“The Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) EVMs developed in Israel are rated as
the most advanced machines in the world. But we have proved that they
are vulnerable to all kinds of tampering,” Avishai Wool, of the School
of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, told DC on Thursday.

“We
can show how a low-budget adversary armed with a small instrument can
read out all votes already cast into the ballot box, suppress the votes
of one or several voters, rewrite votes at will and even completely
disqualify all votes in a single booth,” Prof. Wool says in the paper.
“These attacks are easy to mount and very difficult to detect.”
\
While
Prof. Wool refused to comment on Indian EVMs, several experts have
noted that most electronic polling devices are susceptible to tampering.
Prof. Wools’ comments follow a letter qritten by David Dill, professor
of computer science at Stanford University, to Chief Election
Commissioner Navin Chawla on Indian EVMs lacking credibility.

Subramanian
Swamy, former Union minister for law, said Bharat Electronics Ltd and
ECIL, who developed the Indian EVM , have withdrawn their application
for a patent for the device from the World Intellectual Property
Organisation.
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/chennai/evms-are-not-foolproof-says-computer-scientist-540

Don’t stand on prestige, dump EVMs, save democracy

http://www.indianevm.com/videos.php?id=12 Computer Science Prof. of Stanford Univ., Dr. David Dill’s statement on Indian EVMs

http://www.indianevm.com/videos.php?id=14 (Videos, expert panel)

Election Commission concedes manipulation of EVMs

The
Election Commission of India has made an amazing confession: that the
security and integrity of the entire election system will be compromised
if the EVM software and the hardware design becomes known.

This
is what technologists, activists and political leaders have been saying
for many months now and the Commission had steadfastly refuted such
claims with a bizarre “our EVMs are fully tamper proof” claim.

The
above revelation was made by the Election Commission in a letter dated
March 30, 2010 to V.V. Rao, petitioner in the Supreme Court on the EVMs.
I quote below:

”…The Commission is concerned that commercial
interests could use the route of reverse engineering (a process by which
the original software and hardware configuration can be accessed) which
may compromise the security and sanctity of the entire election
system.”

“…It is once again made clear that any demonstration of
alleged tamperability cannot include reverse-engineering as it
compromises security and sanctity of the entire […]

http://www.indianevm.com/blogs/?p=11

Don’t stand on prestige, dump EVMs: Naidu

J. Balaji, The Hindu

Published: April 13, 2010 00:53 IST | Updated: April 13, 2010 02:54 IST

He seeks national debate to clear “doubts in the minds of voters”

Telugu
Desam Party president N. Chandrababu Naidu doubts that electronic
voting machines (EVMs) are non-tamperable, and has sought a national
debate to “clear all the doubts in the minds of voters.”

“I am
convinced that there is scope for tampering with the EVMs,” he said here
on Monday after launching a website, www.indianevm.com, hosted by
election analyst G.V.L. Narasimha Rao and information technologist
Hariprasad.

Though he would not blame the Election Commission,
with the existing EVMs people were not sure whether the votes they cast
went to the candidates of their choice, Mr. Naidu said. When Germany,
Singapore and some European countries had gone back to the paper ballot,
as the EVMs could be tampered with and hacked, why should India alone
use such machines? “The EC should not stand on false prestige and
gracefully go in for a debate as the issue involved the fundamental
rights of the citizens.”

Mr. Naidu said he would take up the
issue with other parties. There would be nothing wrong in the country
going back to the old system of ballot votes if the machines were not
safe and susceptible to tampering.

The former Chief Secretary of
Delhi and IIT alumnus, Omesh Saigal, asked why the chip used in EVMs was
allowed to be written in the United States. “A Trojan horse is sitting
inside the machine.”

During August last, the EC said it gave
opportunities to political parties and individuals who claimed that EVMs
could be manipulated to prove their case. But “they either failed or
chose not to demonstrate,” it said.

“The EC would like to
underline that it always had a firm conviction and complete satisfaction
that EVMs could not be tampered with. Its faith in the machine has
never wavered through the conduct of elections in the last many years.”

None
was able to actually demonstrate that the EVMs used by the Commission
could be tampered with. “What has been demonstrated or claimed to have
been demonstrated is on a privately assembled lookalike of ECI-EVMs and
not the actual EVM, produced by the Electronics Corporation of India
Limited,” the Commission said.

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article395509.ece

EVM debate rages on, lets get rid of it.

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article395509.ece

EVM debate rages. Jump in and cast your vote on the spot poll on this blog.

My
personal take is that advanced countries with a longer history of
democracy like the US, UK, Australia, France, Netherlands, Norway,
Sweden and many other European countries don’t use a EVM but the good
old paper and ballot. Why should we move to a EVM.

1) The EVM
does not provide a physical evidence of a vote. Whereby a re count can
be demanded. In earlier elections it has been seen that after a re count
a loosing candidate has won. A recount in EVM will just mean adding up
of all votes which will always add up to the earlier number. How do we
know this is correct.
2) This machine does not allow for any audit
just because it has no physical evidence. So tomorrow we shall all do
corporate accounting on a calculator (no need for bills, invoice, chalan
etc) and show the auditors the final figure on the screen of the
calculator. This is what EVM amounts to.
3) This goes against the basic Right to Information Act. Where is the evidence.
4) A 10 std Physics student can rig up such a device. I wonder why you need a micro processor even.
Please,
please jump in and tell the govt that we don’t need the EVM. Why are
they scared of going back to the old system when there is a section of
the population that does not believe in the authenticity of this device.
Don’t believe in the impartiality of the EC, its fully corrupted by
congress ideologues.

भारत मैं सभ कुछ बिकता हैं हम कैसे मान ले की EC नहीं बीके, EVM यंत्र बनाने वाले नहीं बीके होवे हैं |  

PS:
UPA won a surprise victory in 2004 and left many stunned about NDA’s
loss. Many never expected this but it happened. Incidentally EVM were
first used in 2004.  

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/04/evm-debate-rages-on-lets-get-rid-of-it.html

http://www.indianevm.com/
: EVMs are prone to tampering by both external hackers and insiders.
The danger of insider fixing of elections is recognized the world over.
Hence mere faith in companies and a host of private players handling
EVMs cannot be the basis for election results. Elections can be trusted
only if the results are verifiable and auditable. Most developed
countries have rejected or reformed direct-recording EVMs. Election
Commission of India is persisting with the voting machines ignoring the
serious concerns. Hence this effort to mobilize public opinion.

In
the Philippines ballot papers are used. Counting is done through voting
machines by optically scanning the ballots into the machine. Still, a
manual audit is mandated. In computing, if things can go wrong, they
always will; this is Murphy’s law of computing. I hope you have read
Stanford Univ. Prof. Dill’s letter to
ECI. http://www.scribd.com/doc/26954805/Dr-Dill-Letter-to-ECI

The nature of the electonic counting in the Philippines

kalyan 25 Feb. 2010

EVMs and cyberlaw of the Philippines: mandated manual audit

Article posted February 24, 2010 - 09:48 PM
Commission
on Elections (Comelec) chairman Jose Melo on Wednesday rejected the
idea of conducting the random manual audit before the declaration of the
winners in the May polls, saying that it will only cause unnecessary
delays.

“(We don’t want) a simple audit (to) deter proclamation,” Melo said in a press briefing.

The
poll body chief issued the statement after some groups asserted that
the random manual audit be done right after the election results are
transmitted and before the winners are proclaimed. (See: More voting
machines should be audited to ensure polls’ credibility)

Section
24 of Republic Act 9369 requires a random manual audit to be conducted
in one precinct per congressional district in each province and city.

“Any
difference between the automated and manual count will result in the
determination of root cause and initiate a manual count for those
precincts affected by the computer or procedural error,” it further
said.

But Melo said that conducting the audit before the
proclamation would cause a great delay because the auditors would still
have to “reconcile” the marks on a ballot that were recognized and not
recognized by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine.

“Magkakaroon
ng variation yan, magdedebate, madedelay yan. Ang mark na ganyan,
bibilangin ng manual, pero hindi binilang ng makina, sino paniniwalaan
mo (There will definitely be a variation, triggering debate, which would
delay everything. Marks like those that are counted manually, but not
counted by the machine—which would you believe),” he said.

He
further said that it would be fine if only the proclamation of the
winners of the local elections would be delayed, but he said that even
the national positions would have to await proclamation.

“If we
are going to delay the proclamation because of a simple concern of one
machine, bakit pa tayo nag-automate (why did we automate at all)?” he
said.

Earlier, the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections
(Namfrel) and the Consortium of Electoral Reforms (CER) also asked the
poll body to increase the number of voting machines that will undergo
auditing.

The groups said that at least 2.5 to 3 percent of the
82,200 PCOS units or five poll machines per congressional district
should be manually audited to give enough assurance that the results of
the elections are credible. —Kimberly Jane T. Tan/JV, GMANews.TV

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/184694/comelec-chief-no-audit-before-poll-winners-are-proclaimed#

‘EVMs illegally being used for a decade’

Sanjay Sharma, TNN, Feb 22, 2010, 03.44am IST
CHANDIGARH:
The electronic voting machines (EVMs) are being used in violation of
the Information Technology Act 2000, a research paper has revealed.

Author
of the research paper, advocate Ajay Jagga, told The Times of India, on
Sunday that as per IT Act, 2000, a verifiable audit trail has to be
provided in case of any electronic record, which is now admissible as
evidence as per Evidence Act but in case of electronic voting, the voter
does not get any receipt with regard to his voting.

The
research paper recently attracted the attention of experts when a
conference on “EVMs: How trustworthy?” in Chennai passed a unanimous
resolution on February 13 asking Jagga to approach the Election
Commission of India (ECI) for bringing the electronic voting procedure
in tune with IT Act, 2000.

Jagga said he would soon approach ECI
seeking formation of legal committee to remove the illegality or will
knock the doors of court.

The lawyer said, “Unless the voter
gets a receipt like the one we get in ATM or after the use of debit or
credit cards, all electronic transactions including a vote, are
illegal.” What is the evidence that the vote cast has really been
recorded and that it has been recorded in the manner the voter intended,
he asked.

For the purpose and to protect the secrecy of ballot,
all such receipts, after the voter has checked his transaction, should
be put in a box which should remain with ECI to be produced as evidence
in case of a dispute, he said. The government amended the relevant laws
in 1989 to equate EVM with ballot and ballot box to facilitate
transition from ballot paper to EVM but the IT Act 2000 created a new
complication that has to be immediately resolved in the interest of
fairness of things, Jagga pointed out.

The lawyer also proved
that the machine can be tampered with which has been accepted by the
government itself in its letter to withdraw patent applications filed by
Electronics Corporation of India and Bharat Electronics Ltd, makers of
the machine. The PSUs withdrew their patent applications on the ground
that the machine may not be tamper-proof, he said, adding that America
and Germany had to return to ballot paper after their machines were
found wanting.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/EVMs-illegally-being-used-for-a-decade/articleshow/5601297.cms

Linked on USA Today 23 Feb. 2010 http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Places,+Geography/Countries/India/05zF4kBeFJ47y/1

Hackers can ’steal’ ballots from electronic voting machines- 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop
Indo-Asian News Service
Washington, August 11, 2009
First Published: 16:48 IST(11/8/2009)
Last Updated: 17:06 IST(11/8/2009)

Computer
scientists have demonstrated how criminals could hack an electronic
voting machine (EVM) and ’steal’ votes using a malicious programming
approach that had not been invented when the voting machine was
designed.
The team of scientists from the Universites of California,
San Diego, Michigan and Princeton employed “return-oriented programming”
to force an electronic voting machine to turn against itself.

“Voting
machines must remain secure throughout their entire service lifetime,
and this study demonstrates how a relatively new programming technique
can be used to take control of a voting machine that was designed to
resist takeover, but that did not anticipate this new kind of malicious
programming,” said Hovav Shacham.

Shacham is professor of
computer science at UC San Diego’s (UC-SD )Jacobs School of Engineering
and study co-author. His study demonstrates that return-oriented
programming can be used to execute vote-stealing computations by taking
control of an EVM designed to prevent code injection.

The
computer scientists had no access to the machine’s source code - or any
other proprietary information - when designing the demonstration attack.

By
using just the information that would be available to anyone who bought
or stole a voting machine, the researchers addressed a common criticism
made against voting security researchers: that they enjoy unrealistic
access to the systems they study.

“Based on our understanding of
security and computer technology, it looks like paper-based elections
are the way to go. Probably the best approach would involve fast optical
scanners reading paper ballots. These kinds of paper-based systems are
amenable to statistical audits, which is something the election security
research community is shifting to,” said Shacham.

“You can actually run a modern and efficient election on paper,” he said.

“If you are using electronic voting machines, you need to have a separate paper record at the very least,” he added.
There findings were presented at the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop.
http://www.erodov.com/forums/hackers-can-steal-ballots-electronic-voting-machines/23603.html

ECI
has to answer for the holes in the bucket identified in the book edited
by Subramanian Swamy and Kalyanaraman, Electronic Voting Machines —
Unconstitutional and Tamperable (2010)
http://www.flipkart.com/electronic-voting-machines-subramanian-swamy-book-8170947987
A private co. had a project to EVMs. Are look-alike EVMs available in the market?
Why
are EVMs being manufactured abroad (with control units burnt-in with
programs in foreign countries using Indian agents)? How can BEL/ECIL
claim IP rights for such foreign-makes? How much money has been spent
for this foreign outsourcing?

 ECI should scrap EVMs which are
unconstitutional in any case and revert to paper ballots.Save democracy
which has flourished in India for over 1000 years since Uttaramerur
Inscription of Parakesari Varman of Parantaka Chola days. This was
mentioned in Constituent Assembly debates by the late T. Prakasham, CM
of composite Madras Presidency.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/6-EVMs-recovered-from-scrap-dealers/articleshow/7049951.cms
 
Editorial: E-voting needs a paper trail
Dec. 6, 2010
Eight
years after the “hanging chads” fiasco in Florida, and two months
before one of the most important presidential elections in U.S. history,
Congress still refuses to listen to the nation’s top computer
scientists and require a secure, auditable paper trail for all federal
elections. This despite the latest revelation of a serious problem with
the electronic voting machines used in 34 states — including Virginia
and Maryland — in addition to their well-publicized vulnerability to
hacking.

In March, Ohio officials found a programming error that
dropped votes when the data on memory cards from multiple electronic
machines are electronically transferred to a central tabulator, as they
would be on Election Day. Dozens of lawyers are ready to file legal
challenges everywhere e-voting machines are used, even those declared
“qualified” by the National Association of State Election Directors.
Such litigation could tie up final election results far longer than it
would take to count paper ballots.

State and local government officials
have spent $1.5 billion on e-voting machines in recent years, most of
it federal funds under the 2002 Help America Vote Act. But instead of
ensuring a fast, secure way to count millions of votes, they got a
technological nightmare. Studies in Ohio and California confirmed that
e-voting machines currently in use can allow individuals to cast
multiple votes, load viruses that crash the system, produce fake tallies
and even change previously cast votes.

As recently as May, a spokesman
for Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems)
blamed the Ohio glitch on state-installed anti-virus software, but
eventually admitted to a decade-old “logic error” programmed on all 19
of its touch screen and optical scan models. Computer experts say every
e-voting machine now in use has serious security vulnerabilities. Even a
piece of white tape on a scanner can block votes from being
recorded.

“We don’t know how to make secure paperless voting,” says
Stanford computer science professor David Dill, founder of the Verified
Voting Foundation and author of Attackdog, a computer model that
simulates more than 9,000 ways to attack e-voting systems. Dr. Dill and
others like him have warned again and again that an auditable paper
trail is the only way to guarantee a secure election, the very bedrock
of democracy. Congress has less than two months to pass emergency
legislation requiring state election officials to add verifiable paper
trails to all voting in the November election. There is no more time to
lose.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorial-e-voting-needs-paper-trail
 
Source: http://www.indianevm.com/

 Download:

http://www.supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/wp%28c%29No.161of2004.pdf



http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/supreme-court-asks-election-commission-to-implement-paper-trail-in-evms-429689



Supreme Court asks Election Commission to implement paper trail in EVMs

New
Delhi:  The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Election Commission to
introduce in a phased manner the paper trail in Electronic Voting
Machines (EVMs) for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, saying “it is an
indispensable requirement of free, fair and transparent” polls which
will restore confidence of the voters.

The Supreme Court, which
directed the Centre to provide financial assistance to the poll panel
for introduction Vote Verifier Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system with the
EVMs, said it will “ensure the accuracy of the voting system” and also
help in “manual counting of votes in case of dispute.”

“The
‘paper trail’ is an indispensable requirement of free and fair
elections. The confidence of voters in the EVMs can be achieved only
with introduction of the paper trail,” it said.

“EVMs with VVPAT
system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. With an intent to have
fullest transparency in the system and to restore the confidence of the
voters, it is necessary to set up EVMs with VVPAT system because vote is
nothing but an act of expression which has immense importance in
democratic system,” the bench said.

“VVPAT is a system of
printing paper trail when the voter casts his vote, in addition to the
electronic record of the ballot, for the purpose of verification of his
choice of candidate and also for manual counting of votes in case of
dispute,” a bench comprising Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi
said.

The bench asked the Election Commission to introduce VVPAT
in EVMs in gradual stages or geographical-wise in the 2014 general
elections.

While asking the Centre to provide financial
assistance, the bench noted the submissions made by the Election
Commission in its affidavit that it has decided to increase the use of
VVPAT units in a phased manner and has already written to the Ministry
of Law and Justice to issue administrative and financial sanction for
procurement of 20,000 units of VVPAT (10,000 each from M/s BEL and M/s
ECIL) costing Rs. 38.01 crore.

The bench said, “Taking notice of
the pragmatic and reasonable approach of the Election Commission and
considering the fact that in general elections all over India, the
Election Commission has to handle one million (ten lakh) polling booths,
we permit EC to introduce the same in gradual stages or
geographical-wise in the ensuing general elections.”

“The area,
state or actual booth(s) are to be decided by the EC and the EC is free
to implement the same in a phased manner,” it said.

The bench passed the order on two similar petitions; one of those petitions was filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy.

Claiming
that EVMs were open to hacking, Mr Swamy had sought directions to the
poll watchdog to introduce paper trail to easily and cheaply meet the
requirements of proof that the EVM has rightly registered the vote cast
by a voter.

Mr Swamy had moved the Supreme Court against January
2012 order of the Delhi High Court disallowing his prayer to direct
Election Commission to incorporate the system of paper trail in EVMs.

The
bench noted that though initially the poll panel was little reluctant
in introducing paper trail by use of VVPAT, pursuant to its directions,
the Election Commission contacted several expert bodies and technical
advisers and held meetings with national and state level political
parties and carried out demonstrations.