2019 general elections to have paper-trail EVMs: CEC

Chief Election Commissioner
(CEC) Nasim Zaidi also said that voting through the internet is not on
EC’s agenda in the near future though it is going to use information and
communication technology (ICT) in a big way to reach the voters in the
coming days.

“We have reached a stage where people are demanding hundred per
cent deployment of paper audit trail machine. We have preserved the
secrecy (in this system) as well. Our plan is that by 2019, the whole
country will be covered by paper audit trail machines. The budget for
this has been committed now,” Zaidi said while addressing an
international seminar today.

The next general elections are due in 2019.

The paper audit trail machine or Voter Verified Paper Audit
Trail (VVPAT) was first introduced by the Commission in 2013 in order to
enhance transparency in the polls process and increase electorate’s
confidence that their vote goes without error to their desired
candidate.

Once the vote is polled, the VVPAT linked EVM immediately takes
a printout and it is preserved for later use to tally in case there is a
dispute in the final result.

Zaidi, who was speaking on the topic ‘Leveraging Technology
for Transparent and Credible Elections’, stressed that secrecy of voters
will be zealously preserved.

While the poll watchdog is taking full advantage of ICT for
“recommending legislation” on providing electronic postal ballot
facility to overseas Indian voters, the CEC said the same confidence
cannot be expressed at present in the context of internet voting owing
to security concerns.

For e-postal ballot, Zaidi said a “safe technology” has been developed and it is being “validated and tested currently….”

“Employing internet voting or online voting is not our horizon
in the long term because it requires serious consideration of challenges
posed by technology.

“We have to weigh between perceived and actual benefits versus
perceived and actual challenges associated with online voting, security
and secrecy of voting alongwith encryption and end-to-end verification
of voters are some of the most important consideration in online
voting,” he said.
Zaidi said the EC has always marched along with

technology despite challenges coming its way like “controversies
and opposition raised by political parties and activists” while
introducing EVMs as replacement of the paper ballot system.

Zaidi said despite numerous allegations and accusations, the
EVMs have stood the test of time and have proved their accuracy in
ensuring free and fair polls across the country.

“It took the Commission more than 20 years to develop and
introduce EVMs in the country after fulfilling all legal requirements
and convincing stakeholders about justification, accuracy and integrity
of machines. EVMs are now fully accepted. They enjoy the trust and
confidence of voters.

“Our machines are tamper and security proof and have complete
integrity and transparency in storage, transportation and demonstration
to political parties and candidates during election period.
Cases of technical malfunctioning of EVMs do occur during testing and
actual use, but we have an efficient system of replacement of these
machine and within matter of less than an hour,” Zaidi said while
endorsing the EVMs.

He said despite these results, the EVMs “continued to be
attacked by activists in various media and judicial fora on account of
alleged lack of transparency”.

“According to these activists, a voter does not get any
physical evidence whether his voting has gone to the intended candidate.
This in turn has led to introduction of paper audit trail machines
after an order of Supreme Court in 2013,” he said.

The CEC said VVPAT machines hence acted to resolve the queries and clarifications sought by people in this regard.

He added that “not a single” dispute has been reported from the
country vis-a-vis VVPAT usage in polls and the EC has deployed more
than 20,000 such paper audit trail machines till now.

While moving forward in this direction, the CEC said the most important thing to be kept in mind was the security of the data.

“The biggest challenge in using ICT by electoral management
bodies lies in relation to ICT security, certification and third party
auditing.

“No electoral democracy can afford to have a technology that
fails at its simplest and can be manipulated or subjected to
malpractices at its worst. This can demolish the credibility of
elections,” he said.

The electronic voting machines are safe and secure only if the source code used in the EVMs is genuine.



Shockingly, the EVM manufacturers, the BEL and ECIL, have shared
the ‘top secret’ EVM software program with two foreign companies,
Microchip (USA) and Renesas (Japan) to copy it onto microcontrollers
used in EVMs. This process could have been done securely in-house by the
Indian Worse, when the foreign companies deliver microcontrollers fused
with software code to the EVM manufacturers, the EVM manufacturers
cannot “read back” their contents as they are either OTP-ROM or masked
chips. 



Amusingly, the software given to foreign companies is not even made
available with the Election Commission, ostensibly for security reasons.
With such ridiculous decisions, the Election Commission and the public
sector
manufacturers have rendered security of the EVMs a mockery.  Adopting an
open standards policy by making the software public and allowing
parties to test the software installed in the EVMs would have offered
better.



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 Swamy

https://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.


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.


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

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
arenot 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 
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.

It noted that after a thorough examination, VVPAT was successfully
used in 21 polling stations of 51-Noksen (ST) Assembly Constituency of
Nagaland.

“The information furnished by the ECI, through the
affidavit dated October 1, 2013 clearly shows that VVPAT system is a
successful one,” the bench said.