.
http://sarvajan.ambedkar.org
Online
Continuous Conference, seminar, symposium on Universal Adult Franchise through Paper Ballots
rejecting the fraud EVMs/VVPAT to safeguard Democracy, Equality, Liberty and Fraternity as enshrined in our Constitution
Revert back to Paper Ballots as Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) is being Manipulated.
Voting is a fundamental right
The heart of democracy is voting .
The heart of voting is TRUST that each vote is recorded and counted with accuracy and impartiality.
The purpose of an election is not to name the winner, but it is to convince the losers that they lost.
Voting is a statutory right under the Representation of People Act
1950 and fundamental rights in India under Article 19(1)(a) to know
the antecedent of the candidates contesting for the election.
A voter has the right to know whether his / her vote has been recorded and counted.
Voter in this country today do not know whether his /her vote has been recorded or
counted with accuracy and impartiality.
There is no proof
and there is no accountability.
EVMs Does not answer these questions.
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) have two main components
(1)
CONTROL UNIT, used by poll workers, which stores and accumulates votes,
and
(2) a BALLOT UNIT, located in the election booth, which is used by
voters.
These units are connected by a 5 m cable, which has one end permanently fixed to the ballot unit.
The system is powered by a battery pack inside the control unit.
The ballot unit has 16 candidate buttons.
If any are unused, they are
covered with a plastic masking tab inside the unit.
When there are more
than 16 candidates, an additional ballot unit can be connected to a port
on the underside of the first ballot unit.
Up to four ballot units can
be chained together in this way, for a maximum of 64 candidates.
A four-position slide switch in the ballot unit selects its position in
the chain.
The Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics
Corporation of India (ECIL) are the manufacturers of EVMs in our country and
the foreign companies in US and Japan supplying micro-controllers,
The electronic voting machines (EVMs) used in elections are
internationally known as Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting
machines which record votes directly in electronic memory.
Electronic voting machines were first introduced in India in 1982 in
assembly elections on a limited basis. One such constituency where they
were used was the Parur Assembly constituency in the state of Kerala. In
50 of the 84 polling stations, electronic voting machines were used.
EVMs have been in universal use since the general elections of
2004, when paper ballots were phased out completely.
They have been
deployed in all assembly polls and the general elections in 2009.
“It is tamper-proof, error-free and easy to operate,” says the EC`s manual for returning officers states.
It is “illegal” to use EVM in India.
In 1984, the Supreme Court held that the use of electronic
voting machines in elections was “illegal” as the Representation of
People (RP) Act, 1951 did not permit use of voting machines in
elections.
Later, the R.P. Act was amended in 1989 incorporating Section
61A.
However, the amendment says voting machines “may be adopted in
such constituency or constituencies as the Election Commission may,
having regard to the circumstances of each case, specify.” Violating the
provisions of the R.P Act, the Election Commission has conducted 2004
and 2009 nationwide general elections only using electronic voting
machines. Many legal experts say that going by the 1984 judgment of the
Supreme Court, parliamentary elections of 2004 and 2009 may be held
illegal. (GVL Narasimha
Rao-http://www.indianevm.com/articles/ten-reasons-for-banning-indian-evms.pdf).
http://www.indianevm.com/blogs/?cat=3)
It will be interesting to know whether ECI specifically issue
notification for use of EVM in the general election of Manipur-2012.
These things happens when we caste our votes.
The general process of electronic voting on the most common EVMs models goes something like this:
Computer security expert, Rice University ).
1. The voter checks in with the voter’s ID with poll workers . The
polling personnel and the agents verify the name and identify the voter
. They obtained signature or thumb print of the voter . To prevent
double voting, they mark the voter’s right index finger with indelible
ink.
2. Next, a poll worker presses the BALLOT button on the control unit to
allow one vote. This causes a green READY light to glow on the ballot
unit.
3. The voter enters the polling booth and presses the button for the
candidate of his or her choice. A red light next to the candidate button
glows, the ready light turns off, and the control unit emits a loud
beep to indicate that the vote has been cast. The red light then turns
off automatically. This process repeats for each voter.
4. At the end of the poll, the presiding officer removes a plastic cap
on the control unit and presses the CLOSE button, which prevents the EVM
from accepting further votes. The ballot unit is disconnected and the
control unit is placed in storage until the public count, which may
occur weeks later.
5. On the counting day, the control units are delivered to a counting
centre. In public view, an election official breaks a seal on the
control unit and presses the RESULT button.
The display on the control
unit shows a sequence of outputs: the number of candidates, the total
votes, and the number of votes received by each candidate.
6. The Counting officials manually record the totals from each machine
and add
them together to determine the results of the election. The machines are
then placed in storage until the next election.
Disadvantages of EVM :
Disadvantages of electronic voting can include viruses and hacking,
as well physical tampering. Despite elaborate safeguards, our country’s EVMs
are vulnerable to serious attacks.
1. EVM Software Isn’t Safe
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
micro-controllers used in EVMs. This process could have been done
securely in-house by the our country manufacturers. 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. (GVL Narasimha
Rao-http://www.indianevm.com/articles/ten-reasons-for-banning-indian-evms.pdf)
2. EVM hardware Isn’t Safe
The danger for EVM manipulations is not just from its software. Even the
hardware isn’t safe. Dr. Alex Halderman, professor of computer science
in the University of Michigan says, “EVMs used in the West require
software attacks as they are sophisticated voting machines and their
hardware cannot be replaced cheaply. In contrast, the our EVMs can
easily be replaced either in part or as wholesale units.” One crucial
part that can be faked is micro-controllers used in the EVMs in which the
software is copied. EVM manufacturers have greatly facilitated fraud by
using generic micro-controllers rather than more secure ASIC or FPGA
microcontrollers. Not just only micro-controllers, mother boards (cards
which contain micro-controllers) and entire EVMs can be replaced. Neither
the Election Commission nor the manufacturers have undertaken any
hardware or software audit till date. As a result, such manipulation
attempts would go undetected. To detect such fraud, the upgraded EVMs
have a provision to interface with an Authentication Unit that would
allow the manufacturers to verify whether the EVM being used in the
election is the same that they have supplied to the Election Commission.
The EVM manufacturers developed an “Authentication Unit” engaging the
services of Secure-Spin, a Bangalore based software services firm. The
Unit was developed and tested in 2006 but when the project was ready for
implementation, the project was mysteriously shelved at the instance of
the Election Commission. Several questions posed to the Election
Commission for taking this decision went unanswered. (GVL Narasimha
Rao-http://www.indianevm.com/articles/ten-reasons-for-banning-indian-evms.pdf)
3. Vulnerability to hacking: Our EVMs can be hacked both before and after elections to alter
election results.
Apart from manipulating the EVM software and
replacing many hardware parts discussed above, our EVMs can be hacked
in many ways. To possibilities may be mentioned :-
Each EVM contains two EEPROMs inside the Control Unit in which the
voting data is stored. They are completely unsecured and the data inside
EEPROMs can be manipulated from an external source. It is very easy to
read (data from) the EEPROMs and manipulate them (GVL Narasimha
Rao-http://www.indianevm.com/articles/ten-reasons-for-banning-indian-evms.pdf)
The second and the most deadly way to hack Indian EVMs is by inserting a
chip with Trojan inside the display section of the Control unit. This
requires access to the EVM for just two minutes and these replacement
units can be made for a few hundred rupees. Bypassing completely all
inbuilt securities, this chip would manipulate the results and give out
“fixed” results on the EVM screen. The Election Commission is completely
oblivious to such possibilities. (
http://www.indianevm.com/articles/ten-reasons-for-banning-indian-evms.pdf).
Contrary to claims by election authorities, these paperless EVMs
suffer from significant vulnerabilities. Even brief access to the
machines could allow dishonest election “Insiders “ or other criminals
to alter election results.
There are allegations that some “insiders” demanding vast sums (Rs. 5
Crore or more for each assembly constituency) to fix election results.
Who are these insiders? Unlike in the traditional ballot system where
only the election officials were the “insiders”, electronic voting
machine regime has spawned a long chain of insiders, all of whom are
outside the ambit and control of the ECI. There
is every possibility that some of these “insiders” are involved in
murky activities in fixing elections. The whole world—except us in our
country–is alive to the dangers of insider fraud in elections. The
“insiders” include the public sector manufacturers of our country’s
electronic
voting machines namely, the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and
Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL), the foreign companies supplying
micro-controllers, private players (some of which are allegedly owned
by
some political leaders) for carrying out checking and maintenance of
electronic voting machines during elections.
(http://www.indianevm.com/articles/ten-reasons-for-banning-indian-evms.pdf)
A team of researchers showed precisely how a display component could be
replaced with a fake substitute programmed to steal a percentage of the
votes in favour of a chosen candidate. They also demonstrated how stored
votes could be changed between the election and the public counting
session, which in our country, can be weeks later, with a pocket-sized
device.
The team, comprising Hyderabad-based NetIndia, Dr J Alex Halderman,
professor & noted expert on electronic voting security from the
University of Michigan and Holland-based security expert Rop Gonggrijp,
was instrumental in the ban on EVMs in the Netherlands.
4. Which candidate to favour -Once the dishonest display is installed in
an EVM (possibly months or years before the election), the attacker
must communicate which candidate is to be favoured or disfavoured and by
what margin.
There are many different ways that attackers could send
such a signal—various kinds of radios, secret combinations of key
presses, or even by using the number of candidates on the ballot.
2. Stealing of Votes To steal votes, the attacker indicates his favoured
candidate using the rotary switch, which selects a number from 0–9, and
the attacker can use it to pick a favoured candidate in any of the
first 9 ballot positions, which normally include the major national
parties. When the switch is set to positions 1-9, the chip on the
clip-on device executes a vote-stealing programme . The programme runs
in two passes: first, it reads the list of votes and calculates how many
votes to steal from each candidate, and second, it rewrites the list of
votes, stealing votes as calculated in the first phase. Any time
between the start of polling and the public count, dishonest election
insiders or other criminals could use the clip-on device to change the
votes recorded in the EVM. In India, counting sometimes takes place
weeks after voting, so criminals could wait for an opportunity to tamper
with the machines while they are in storage. In normal operation, the
EVM limits the rate of voting to no more than
5 per minute. However, Clip-on device bypasses the software
restrictions of the EVM, so an attacker is able to again forcibly take
control of an EVM and stuff the electronic “ballot box” with any number
of votes. These attacks are neither complicated nor difficult to
perform, but they would be hard to detect or defend against.
3. 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.
4 The EVM has no means for the voter to verify that his/her votes have
been tallied properly.
5. The EVM has no means outside of the memories of the voting machines
themselves to audit or recount the votes.
6. Susceptibility to fraud: Although some may believe that tampering
with an electronic voting machine is extremely hard to do, computer
scientists have tampered with machines to prove that it is quite easily
done. If people have access to the machines, and know how to work them,
they can take the memory card out of the machine, which stores the
votes, and in place they put their own memory card with a virus that can
tamper with the votes
7. Government ties of manufacturers: The Government at the time of
election may hire any manufacturer or company for manufacturing EVMs
according to the needs of the political party in power An EVM can be
tampered during manufacturing stage, that too during the manufacturing
of the Chip. After tampering the EVM, its difficult to detect it by a
third party. When the tampering happens at the manufacturing stage of
chip, even those who are assembling the EVMs will not be aware of and
cannot detect tampering .
8. Malicious software programming: Any computer software is basically
generated from software programming and coding. And all these soft
wares could be tampered with by a computer programmer who knows the
source code. Testing electronic voting systems for security problems,
especially if they were intentionally introduced and concealed, is
basically impossible. If malicious coding is inserted by programmers
into commercial software that are triggered by obscure combinations of
commands and keystrokes via the computer keyboard, then election results
can change completely.
9. Physical security of machines:
10. Secure storage of cast votes: The votes that are cast using the
electronic voting machines, are stored in a safe storage or space in the
computer machine memory. The time gap between election and the
counting of votes is a risk to possible hacking and manipulation . The
chance of tampering increases as the time gap increases.
(Dr. Dan Wallach, Can a ?
What is
Advantages of EVM
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) have revolutionised the Indian
election process. The advantages of electronic voting machines is
simplicity of the procedure, the ease of tabulation of ballots into
results and the faster and more accurate results . It`s easy to see the
utility of the machine— it eliminates invalid votes, ends booth
capturing, and makes counting easier and faster.
Why do other countries rejected EVMs ?
Several countries in the world rejected Electronic Voting
Machines (EVMs) because they are difficult to secure, easily subject to
manipulation and open to large scale fraud and pose a serious threat for
free, fair and transparent elections in democratic societies. EVMs are
allowed in most states of the US only with a paper back up. Indian EVMs
do not produce a paper trail, which is a major drawback . Potential
dangers of “vote fraud” and more importantly, lack of transparency and
verifiability associated with them prompted ban or restrictions of their
use. Developed nations like the United Kingdom, France, Japan and
Singapore have so far stuck to voting on paper ballots, owing to their
simplicity, verifiability and voter confidence in the system.
Some of the countries ho have rejected EVMs are as follows :-
1. Ireland abandoned e-voting in 2006.
2. Italian Minister Giulano Amato stated, “We decided to stop
the electronic voting machine. During the 2006 elections we experimented
with the machines as a voting system, and not a system that counts the
sections, without any reference to the legally valid votes. “Let`s stick
to voting and counting physically because less easy to falsify.” (
Source of info: http://www.jasonkitcat.com/h/f/JDOM/blog/1/?be_id=320)
3. California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned EVMs in
the November 2004 elections as certain security conditions were not met
with. Verifiable paper trail & certain security conditions need to
be implemented. People want elections results that can be physically
verified. (http://www.wvcag.org/news/fair_use/2004/07_01e.htm)
4. Germany`s Supreme Court ruled in March 2009 that e-voting was unconstitutional.
5. In the Netherlands, in 2006, licenses of 1,187 EVMs were
withdrawn after citizen group `We do not trust voting machines` showed
they could hack into EVMs in 5 minutes from up to 40 metres without the
knowledge of voters or election officials. The nation will return to
paper voting.” (Publication: ComputerWorld, Dt: 19-05-2008, Author:
Andreas Udo de Haes)
6. Supreme Court of Finland declared the result of pilot
electronic voting machines invalid in the municipal corporation
elections of 2009.
After Hugo Chávez won the 2004 election in Venezuela, it came out that
the government owned 28 percent of Bizta, the company that manufactured
the voting
machines. The CIA has reported vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela,
Macedonia and
Ukraine and a raft of concerns about EVMs & tampering. Stigall who
studied electronic systems in about 36 countries said that most
countries` machines produced paper receipts that voters then dropped
into boxes. However, even that doesn`t prevent corruption. (
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/64711.html)
Our country must also ban EVMs.
Speed of election
results is obviously an attraction for the EVMs. But saving democracy is
more critical than saving election costs or gain in efficiency.
Numerous EVM rigging allegations have been made by many prominent
personalities.
