A majority of opposition parties, including the Congress, have demanded a return to ballot paper or cross-checking of at least 30 per cent of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPATs).
The demand was put forth at an all-party meet convened by the Election Commission Monday to discuss electoral reforms. Critics, however, believe that the opposition is grasping at straws to justify its losses.
EC needs to rebuild faith of voters & political parties in EVMs and VVPATs
In certain elections over the last few months, there has been a suspicion in the minds of a large number of people – including opposition parties – that EVMs can be hacked so that the results favour a particular political party.
The EC is strongly opposed to this view, and has full faith in the EVMs and the VVPAT system. They’re now in the process of getting more EVMs and VVPATs. But the issue is that in spite of the EC having an elaborate system of checks and balances and storage of EVMs, whereby they say no other agency can get hold of them, there are possibilities of EVMs being tampered.
EC maintains that EVMs are tamper-proof because they are not connected to the internet and are standalone machines. But since there is suspicion about whether the ballot, which is cast through the EVM, actually goes to the party/candidate, the EC needs to generate more faith in the system.
However, the demand of the opposition party to go back to paper ballots is also a retrograde demand. It leads to various other issues such as booth capturing and ballot box stuffing – the EVM system was introduced to check these problems.
To enhance and increase the faith of political parties and voters in EVMs, the EC needs to take proactive steps to make it more reliable. They need to increase the number of EVM machines connected to VVPATs. They need to improve the technical efficiency of VVPATs – there were incidents of VVPAT overheating. They need to make the paper and ink better so that it doesn’t get obliterated over time.
When opposition parties win election, they don’t find faults in EVMS. Only when they lose, they bring up this issue. That being said, faith of the voters as well as political parties is important and needs to be ensured.