Ban The EVM

Welcome!

This website is on a mission. The mission of this website is:

1. Explain the evils and unsolvable problems of electronic voting machine (EVM) in Indian as well as global context.
2. Explain how these problems result in destruction of election integrity and hence death of democracy.
3. Convince Indians as well as citizens of other countries which use EVM to get EVM banned.
4. Prevent more countries from falling into the EVM trap.
5. Suggest ideas to conduct genuine elections, even with some electronic automation.

But first let us understand what ensures genuineness and integrity in voting and election process, essential to democracy. This background will help us understand why EVMs kill genuine voting, kill integrity of elections, and thus kill democracy itself and hence MUST be banned!

What is voting and elections?

• Voting:

Voting is the civilized way by which a group of people pick between a set of choices. Each person in the group picks their choice(s) by writing it down or recording it in some way. This act is called casting or exercising their vote. The number of people who made each choice is counted. Before they cast and count the votes, all voters and stakeholders decide the set of rules for acceptable majority/superiority/victory of choices based vote counts. Based on these rules and actual vote counts, the final winning choice (or choices) of the group are determined. The group accepts these winning choice(s) as the 'collective will' of the group with least injustice to least number of people in the group. This whole exercise is called voting.


• Election:

When such voting is used to select between persons to hold a particular office or role, it is called election.


• Some Examples:

The voting group of people could be anything. It could be a group of friends, a housing society, a company's shareholders, and of course most importantly it could be citizens of a democracy choosing their government or even laws & aspects of their Constitution.

What principles should voting follow?

Since the purpose of voting is minimizing injustice to individuals in a group decision, it is most important that the people who are at receiving end of 'injustice', the people whose choices differed from the final voted choice of the group, have full confidence in the integrity of voting. As someone famously said, "Purpose of voting is to satisfy the loser that they lost" (I couldn't trace who originally said it.)
Many good principles have been agreed upon internationally to ensure integrity as well as trust in integrity of elections in democracies. India and its Election Commission have also accepted many of these, through original Constituent Assembly discussions, multiple court judgements as well as international participation and agreements. They have agreed that elections should be:

• Free and Fair
• Accountable
• Transparent

There are other principles as well, but we will stick to these main ones, because of two reasons

• Other principles are in a way covered by these main broad ones unless we want to be very particularly pedantic
• More important reason for sticking to these four is that they have been accepted by Election Commission of India on record, many times. So in our campaign to ban EVM, we can directly use these principles as strong reasons, without having to convince ECI that these priciples matter.
• Haha wait there is a third reason as well. The more principles I list here, the more I would have to read about them, elaborate and explain what these principles mean and how EVMs destroy them. Then readers will have to read more and grasp. So we let it be for now, and will edit later if it seems really necessary to add more internationally acknowledged principles to make our case to ban EVM.

How do we know Election Commission of India is officially committed to free and fair, transparent and accountable elections?

Well because many official documents on their website say so!

1. ECI has prepared 2016-2025 Strategic Plan Book. It's Mission Statement as well as Guiding Principles have a clear emphasis on these principles! Both are present on marked page number 8, which is raw page 22 of the pdf 1

   Mission Statement of ECI in the Strategic Plan Book:

   "The Election Commission of India maintains independence, integrity and autonomy; ensures accessibility, inclusiveness, and ethical participation of stakeholders; and, adopts highest standards of professionalism for delivering free, fair, and transparent elections to strengthen the trust in electoral democracy and governance"
   

   Principle 2 of Guiding Principles in the Strategic Plan Book:

   "To conduct elections with highest standard of credibility, freeness, fairness, transparency, integrity, accountability, autonomy and professionalism"
   
2. A press note as recent as 19th October, 2016 highlights our Election Commissioner emphasizing these principles at ECI International conference on Voter Education.2
   "Shri O. P. Rawat, Election Commissioner of India emphasized on the need of having stringent mechanism to ensure free, fair, transparent & accountable election"
   

Perhaps we can find many more such documents on ECI website but these are enough to conclude that ECI is comminited to the principles of free and fair, accountable, transparent elections.

Nice fancy words, but what do these voting principles mean?

1. Free and fair elections:

   Government and its authority should only derive from free will of the people. This will should get freely expressed in periodic elections. In these elections, every person should be free to run for public office as well vote for public office without discrimination or intimidation. This should happen in atmosphere of freely flowing political opinions and information. The votes they freely cast should get fairly and accurately counted. Only by such free and fair elections can people have government that is owned by the people, realizing their right to sovereignty.
   Ensuring free and fair elections usually derives from lot of things during normal times as well, not just election time, such as non-discrimination among citizens, rule of law, free speech, etc. Election time measures include secret ballot, security, etc.
   Many of these derive directly from International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 19 December 19663. India acceded to ICCPR on 10 April 1979 4.
   Some parts of ICCPR 3 directly relevant to free and fair elections are Article 1, Article 2, Article 3, Article 19, Article 21, culminating of course with Article 25 which literally talks about democratic governance and elections. ICCPR is one of the Covenants that created international legal obligations for Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was originally just a moral obligation since 194856. These two, together with one more Covenant and two optional Protocols, are together called the International Bill of Human Rights.
   The gist of free and fair elections which I have presented above, and which I hope is simple,straightforward, accurate and complete enough, is based on many documents related to the same, prepared by international, intergovernmental and non governmental organizations promoting democracy. Some are listed in references789. I could have missed listing some.
   

2. Accountable elections:

   Elections may be claimed to be Free and Fair, but there is no basis to this claim if the elections lack accountability. Accountability means every authority and official must have an obligation to report and explain, and be held responsible & answerable for all of their decisions and actions during course of electoral process as well as their consequences.
   This accountability must derive from well defined laws, regulations and procedures that govern the electoral process. And of course, the legislators, the policy-makers and the authorities who frame these laws, regulations & procedures must also be held accountable for developing a framework that can instill confidence in the electoral process and trust in the outcome!
   For such accountability to practically exist, for such answerablity to practically exist, electoral process needs proper accounting, proper tracking as well as consistent and durable record keeping of every activity, every decision, every step. Based on that, observations can be made and answers demanded whether elections followed the correct framework set up for ensuring genuineness and integrity of elections or not.
   Some important areas where consistent, durable records & reports must be maintained by election authorities and officials are given below:
   

   1. Areas pertaining to the general electoral process:

      • What are the expected and actual outcomes related to election integrity, inclusiveness, efficiency etc?
      • Unambiguous records of fund sources, expenditure, efficiency of operations.
      • What decisions made, by whom, on what basis, and what are the results?
      • What election materials & equipment were procured, from whom and by what criteria?
      • If it was decided to involve private contractors in the electoral process, officials must be answerable for this, even more so if some new election technologies were chosen.
      • Whate are the tenders and other criteria for choosing particular private contractors?
      • Framework for accountability of private contractors and its actual records.

   2. Areas directly pertaining to voting & elections:

      • Consistent, accurate, complete lists of who can vote.
      • Genuine list of who actually voted.
      • Vote counts and raw record of votes that can be authenticated, recounted and audited, particularly by humans.
      • Proof of intact chain of custody of voting equipment, records, etc.
   Of course that is just a list of important items, not an exhaustive list. Accountability should be there in EVERYTHING POSSIBLE when democracy of a nation is at stake! Further, if these records, accounts, reports etc maintained for accountability do not match, or aren't consistent with each other, or are missing, or cannot be inspected, or if 'sum doesn't equal the parts' in some way, then the election was not really an accountable one even if relevant officials or observers or stakeholders certify it to be so. In recent times Election Commissions in India have been extremely lax, opaque and even impudent in many of these aspects. They even deleted some election records from their own website when discrepancies in recent election tallies were pointed out. But we will come to all that in later essays.
   Apart from govt bodies, officials and private contractors related to electoral process, it is also very important to keep all political parties accountable in terms of their finances, because it directly affects, and can damage free and fair elections. Unaccounted money can be used to buy votes, to intimidate voters through paid goons, to spread misinformation and propaganda, to censor media from spreading correct or relevant information, and to overall create unequal unfair advantage to particular parties or candidates. When parties are held accountable for the sources of funding as well as expenditure, citizens can make use of that info also to decide whether interests of a party or candidate and their backers aligns with own interests. (Psst..related to this, the new extremely opaque 'electoral bonds' pushed by our Finance Minister unconstitutionally through Finance Bill 2017 are going to absolutely destroy accountability in political party funding in India, unless we stop them)
   Apart from election authorities, officials, parties and candidates, other entities could also be held accountable to an extent, such as agents and supporters of candidates and parties for their conduct, media for their discourse & reporting, election observers for how they observe and report.
   To understand election accountability and present it to you as simply as I could I used references10111213. I may have forgotten to note some references too.
   

3. Transparent elections:

   Elections may be claimed to be Accountable to boost their claim of being Free and Fair but that is also just a sham if the officials and authorities are 'accountable' only to each other and congratulate themselves for the same, with no real democratic oversight. Accountability gets truly enforced only when elections are also transparent to all stakeholders of democracy including candidates, political parties, election observers, voters and all citizens alike.
   In a transparent election, every stakeholder must be able to independently and meaningfully observe, scrutinize and verify that each step of the election was conducted according to procedures and without irregularities, without any missing, unobservable, unverifiable parts or steps.
   This should include, but not be limited to, the following aspects:
   
   1. There should be full and detailed clarity about electoral process. This should be easily and publicly available, including detail of every procedure and steps involved.
   2. Based on this info, all stakeholders must have full freedom to see and verify and question integrity and accuracy in crucial aspects of voting like
      
      • Who can vote (voter list)
      • Whether zero votes ensured in voting equipment before voting begins?
      • Who did vote (poll list or participating voter list)
      • Vote counting.
      • Chain of custody of ballots and any other sensitive voting materials, equipment and records.
   3. All stakeholders of democracy must have full access to scrutinize & question all records, trackers, accounts (financial and others) etc which are maintained by election authorities as well as parties and candidates for electoral process accountability.
   4. In case of disputes, records must facilitate end to end audits of election, in full scrutiny of stakeholders. If the records and observables are inconsistent or missing, the election is likely an unreliable fraud. Otherwise stakeholders are likely to be peacefully convinced of the final audit-confirmed results.
   5. There should be full and detailed clarity about the election management bodies (EMB). Their structure, appointment, independence, role and actions should be publicly and easily available.
   6. There should be regular Consultation between policy makers, election bodies, election participants and civil society to evolve more trustworthy electoral processes as well as improve trust in existing ones.
   
   Only by transparency can public, as voters, have the confidence that elections are free and fair and accountable, with trustworthy results that are an accurate reflection of people's will. Otherwise the government formed has no legitimacy among people.
   To understand election transparency and present it to you as simply as I could I used references1314. I may have forgotten to note some references too.
   This reference 15 provides some understanding on how EVMs destroy transparency (and thus accountability, and thus free and fair election itself) and goes on to provide suggestions like paper trail to bring back transparency in electronic voting too. But frankly those measures can't really ensure transparency, as we will see later.
   For further reading you may also check out principles and code of conduct adopted by UN for election observation and monitoring by citizen orgs16 as well as IFES whitepaper on election audits 17 Of course for our purpose of understanding how EVMs kill transparency, it is not essential to read them, though it should be read and implemented for larger electoral reforms in India
   

So we have seen the princples of genuine voting and they are nice. How do these come into action in voting process? To understand that, let's first list out the key steps in voting process.

What are the typical Action Steps of Voting Process?

In this question, we will not cover detailed political and administrative aspects, some of which we looked at earlier while understanding principles of genuine elections. We only consider the the 'action aspects', which are now our area of interest because

1. These steps directly involve the voter, not just election administration.
2. These steps are directly observable by civic society for transparency.
3. Technology 'improvement' and voting automation can badly destroy integrity of these steps by loss of transparency as well as other reasons.

These action steps are:

1. Pre-Voting Stage

1. Registering voters
2. Maintaining records of registered voters

2. Voting Stage

3. Assuring zero votes just before voting begins
4. Verifying voter's identity on voting day before allowing vote
5. Making poll list or participation list of those who cast a vote
6. Marking the intended candidate(s) for vote
7. Casting/recording the marked vote
8. Counting of cast/recorded votes
9. Combining individual votes or vote counts at constituency level
10. Tabulation and display of results

How is Freeness, Fairness, Accountability & Transparency maintained in Action Steps of Voting Process in traditional way?

1. Pre-Voting Stage

1. Registering voters

At most places in the world, people are legally required to register as voters if they want to vote. If the information and documentary proof submitted by them fulfills the legally defined eligibility criteria, they are added to voter list for their geographical area. This step is necessary to ensure fair elections where each eligible voter has a single and equal vote only and non-eligible people (e.g. foreigners) don't vote.
Fairness may still be compromised if eligible voters get wrongly rejected when they apply. This could happen due any variety of reasons such as simple mistakes in providing info/docs with application, administrative errors, deliberate malice of some officials, or even systematic voter list fraud and disenfranchisement of groups to affect election results. This can be kept in check, detected and corrected by keeping voter registration authorities accountable through transparency.
First, the eligibility critieria, the rules and the process for voter registration should be very clear and accessible publicly, easily. Second, the law must require that voter lists are available for scrutiny by anyone from public who wishes to, so that wrongful changes can be noticed and questioned. Third, and this is relatively new, even applications for voter registrations should be available for public scrutiny. 18
The third part combined with the second part empowers public raise a stink and question authorities if eligible voters who applied were wrongly rejected and not added to voter list. Getting to see forms also brings out simple avoidable mistakes that get applications rejected. That can be used to educate future applicants.


2. Maintaining records of registered voters

Voter lists prepared as above need ongoing maintainance. It involves reaching out and getting new people to register, making sure the voter lists don't get wrongly changed or corrupted and also removing folks due to death, change of residence, loss of eligibility, or such other reasons.

This is of course all for maintaining fairness in elections and again needs accountability and transparency. Transparency in voter lists and application records described in Step 1 above again enables people to question authorties, keep them accountable as well as achieve corrective measures if any voters are found unjustly, unexplainably added or removed from voter list.



2. Voting Stage

3. Assuring zero votes just before voting begins

On voting day before voting begins, election officials, party stakeholders as well as neutral public observers are shown that the ballot box is empty from inside. This transparency builds trust that there is no foul play such as pre-stuffed ballot papers in the box. Once observers are satisifed about this, the box is locked/sealed except for the slit to cast paper ballots through
For best transparency, the ballot box is literally made of transparent material on all sides. This further assures observers that the ballot box is not only visibly empty on the inside but also doesn't have tricks like hidden compartments and panels for cheating. Earliest known example of this seems to be in 1857 19. Shamefully, I haven't found a single mention of transparent ballot box on ECI's website! But apparently we are exporting such transparent ballot boxes to Sri Lanka! 2021 So when we move back to paper ballot voting from EVMs, we MUST insist that EC uses transparent ballot boxes!


4. Verifying voter's identity on voting day before allowing vote

And

5. Making poll list or participation list of those who cast a vote

Most places in the world have laws that require verification of voter's identity before voting. As the law may permit from place to place, voters can identify themselves by an id proof, or by answering questions about personal information they provided when registering to vote, or by getting another voter having a valid id proof to vouch for them, etc. If the voter's identity matches with an entry on voter list, they are marked off and allowed to vote. If they were already marked, they are not allowed to vote second time. This ensures accountability that only eligible people voted and nobody voted twice, and thus contributes to fairness in voting.


6. Marking the intended candidate(s) for vote

After identifying, voter collects ballot paper, walks into a suitable eclosure or partition hidden from everyone, where the ballot box is present. Voter marks the candidate(s) he/she intends to vote, on the ballot paper as per rules given. This is the marking stage and law may allow voter to discard the ballot and get another one in case of wrong or flawed marking. This is in spirit of free and fair elections. No pressure on voter. No injustice to their vote for goof-ups. Of course, the wasted ballot paper must be discarded in a way that it can't be dubiously used to cast an extra vote by anyone


7. Casting/recording the marked vote

Once the voter is sure the marking he/she made on ballot paper is correct, he/she puts the paper ballot in the ballot box. Now the vote is cast/recorded, and cannot be changed by voter. Since the marking of the vote as well as casting/recording of the vote takes place behind an enclosure or partition, no one can know whom the voter voted for. This scheme of 'secret ballot' ensures that voter can vote freely, without of fear of discrimination or retribution.


8. Counting of cast/recorded votes

And

9. Combining individual votes or vote counts at constituency level

After voting is over, the ballot boxes are immediately sealed off. The seals are broken as per procedure only at the time of counting. This is to ensure that votes counted are exactly what voters had voted and fairness and integrity of elections is maintained. Counting may happen at the polling place/precinct/ward itself or the sealed ballot boxes may be sent to a designated central place for counting. If sent to a central place, typically ballots from all polling stations for a given constituency are mixed first, and then counted. This protects secrecy of ballot and no polling place has to fear discrimination based on how they voted.


10. Tabulation and display of results

Before final tabulation of results, officials double check, tripple check the counts. Stringent tallies are done across the stages too. All ballot boxes are accounted for. Total voted ballots must be less than or equal to the total ballot papers that were marked as given out to voters. Total ballots papers given out to voters must again be less than or equal to total ballot papers sent out to polling stations, which should of course be less than or equal to the total ballot papers ordered to be printed. It's even better if such acceptable difference between ballot counts of various stages is acconted for in specific ways such as discarded ballots (before casting vote), or invalid votes cast, unused ballots, etc. As you can see, book keeping and accountability is a major key to free and fair elections, and transparency is the key for true accountability. Observers, stakeholders, and srcutineers of the public all must have access to these records for cross-checking and raising issues.

On the whole, election officials, partisan stakeholders as well as pubic observers and scrutineers keep a hawk eye on all proceedings, except the act of voter actually casting secret ballot. A sharp watch and record is kept on ballot papers, ballot boxes and their chain of custody (transparent ballot box again helps in being assured of its contents being intact), unsealing of the boxes and particularly of the counting process. Video recordings may also be made to both deter foul play as well as detect it if it happens and prove it if needed.

What is election automation?

From the 10 steps above it is clear that core steps of voting involve keeping records of people, records of events, records of votes, performing counts of those votes, and displaying results in a systematic way. Such monotonous tasks which don't need much intelligence or creativity would seem best suited for recording, record keeping and counting machines, reducing human labour and human errors. Shifting burden of any part of the voting process (apart from casting votes by humans of course!) from humans to machines is called election automation or voting automation.
Out of group A & group B steps we have seen above, usually machines automating any or of group B steps are termed 'voting machines'. Generally voting machines include some or all of steps 8, 9 & 10 along with previous steps. Machines that perform 8, 9 and 10 without being involved in steps 3 to 7 are called vote counting machines or counting and tabulation machines. First came the mechanical voting machines and now the shift is towards electronic voting machines (EVMs). This web page 22 has a decent timeline of various 'firsts' in voting automation.
The usual excuses used to push election automation, and particularly electronic voting are, saving money, improving speed & efficiency, reducing fraud, improving public confidence, and the most silly one of showing-off hi-tech ability of country/election body 23. But real world experiences in many countries are often quite opposite, as we will see in many later essays and articles. I joked in first para of this section that voting machines should automate only things other than casting of votes by humans, but that's exactly one of the key problems with electronic voting machines. On the inside, the EVMs could be recording or counting wrongly or doing entirely their own manipulations due to error in design, maintenance, working or deliberate mischief and nobody can know. Thus EVMs may actually be 'casting votes of their own volition', different than what vote the human voters intended and thus wrecking genuince elections and consequently the whole politics of nations or regions!

How does automation affect Freeness, Fairness, Accountability & Transparency in Action Steps of Voting Process?

1. Pre-Voting Stage

1. Registering voters

Technology makes it possible to register as a voter online. This can increase participation, making elections fairer by making more people's opinion count. Further it could reduce the number of people needed to man voter registration counters. But people would still be needed to verify the information and documents submitted by applicants. But this could also make fraud voter registration easier because faking digital copies of id documents may be easier online.


2. Maintaining records of registered voters

I was unable to easily any historical documentation on the internet about how voter records were maintained before digital era. But I think it is a safe bet that there was an overlap era where

1. Voter reqistration & records were the norm (eg Jim Crow laws in early 1900s in USA.
2. No common computers.
3. Voter records maintained in paper files & registers, written by pens or typewriters, maybe even printing press.
4. Voter record transparency was mandated.

That's the era we can meaningfully compare with current era of digitized records and similar legal requirements
Paper voter list record deletions or modifications would need cancellation marks, physical disposals, rewrites, reprints, etc. Due to such physical observable trails, old fashioned paper based voter list maintenance fraud may be found out more easily. Digital records on the other hand would be easier to delete or modify fraudulently without leaving a trace. Voters can also be bulk-targeted for deletion by suitable criteria using basic database queries or advanced big data machine learning techniques. But on the other hand transparency can also be more robust with digital records because public can easily take and keep copies of voter lists. Thus arbitrary deletions and modifications can be easily detected by comparison. The comparisons and detection could be automated by computer programs. As a result genuine voters don't get deprived, and fairness in election is promoted.
But such digital voter records accessed by public are fluid. They can be very easily copied, transmitted, changed in formats, shared around in bulk. This was not possible for paper records in the past which needed hand-copying, distribution of printed copies, photocopying, etc. So the paper records of the past were not likely to be used for purpose other than electoral process scrutiny, especially because even scanners & optical character recognition (OCR) was not too developed. But now data is a big industry, data is the new oil, and voter data is most precious as it could be used by evil geniuses to mess with free and fair election itself, hijacking fates of whole nations. In fact claims are being made that use of voter rolls data combined with internet activity and other details of voter was used to target voters and influence the Brexit vote and 2016 US Presidential Elections 24
Yet another problem is when private contractors are involved in maintaining voter records. Their format of data may be propreitary and hinder voter record transparency. This can be solved by imposing condition on contractors of course.
On the whole, voter record digitization can help increase transparency and hence fairness in election by making it easier for public to have access to the voter records and be vigilant about its correct maintenance BUT reduces privacy and hence freeness in elections especially in era of rising evil big data surveillance and control.
However my gut feel is, privacy risks in voter record digitization can be overcome by thoughtful legal and tech safeguards and particularly limiting the kind of details publicly available in data. What are these exact measures I have not applied thought to, because voter record digitization does not necessarily destroy election integrity in one big sweep. But voting automation by EVMs is different horror story altogether as we see next.

2. Voting Stage

Automation in Voting Stage, i.e. in steps 3 to 9 of Voting Process we saw above is exactly where major disasters strike upon principles of election integrity. This is even more so in electronic automation compared to mechanical automation.
The first victim is transparency. There is some damage to transparency even in mechanical voting machines, but even then, all the machine spare parts can be watched, either while assembled & working or in disassembled state. So we can be reasonably sure of what the machine is doing or how, especially by direct comparison with schematic diagrams and manuals. So although voting no longer remains transparent to layman, it is still reasonably transparent to experts.
But when it comes to electronics, transparency gets totally destroyed. There is hardly anything humans can observe directly. Electronics is either just hardware or hardware+software, both of which are absolutely incompatible with principle of transparency. Anything that you CAN observe is itself made visible to you through display or output devices, which are run by hardware and software. So if any part of it is fooling you, you just cannot know. In fact, not just layman, but even experts cannot really check and guarantee that a given-hardware or software is doing exactly what it claims to do, or has any intended malicious backdoors and attacks or just unintended bugs which can be devastating for something as critical as democracy. All this is made worse when Election Management Bodies like Election Commission of India don't even allow basic examination of the EVM hardware & software under sham excuses like intellectual property or security by obscurity.
Are you sceptical about my claim that there can be absolutely no transparency in electronic voting? I do intend to convince you, and in fact started to give simple detailed explanation that anyone even without electronics background knowledge can understand. But it kept balooning beyond reasonable size for this essay which is mainly about basics principles of genuine elections in democracy, not about lessons electronics. But we will definitely take electronics as well as transparency problem of electronics in future essay or essays.
But hey that doesn't mean you must simply take my word for it! The issue of lack of transparency in electronic voting machines came up in the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. They examined it in detail and declared the electronic voting machines to be unconstitutional because of lack of transparency 2526. Yes the court did say that electronic voting machine use is not prevented if constitutional requirements of transparency are met, for example, by recodring votes in a way other than electronic storage too. Thankfully Germany has not tried to push for such means after court order. They simply stopped using EVMs. But other nations are trying out things like 'voter verified paper audit trails (VVPATs)' for elctronic voting. And Election Commission of India seems to be leaning towards that 'solution' too. But as we will see later, even those VVPATs a complete sham and don't enhance transparency or integrity of elections.
Bottomline is, electronic voting is a complete disaster for transparency. Neither normal public scrutineers nor experts can reliably scrutinize what the electronic voting machine is really doing. Hence without anyone being able to easily detect, it could be not doing something it is supposed to do as well as doing something it is not supposed to do. This can be by deliberate backdoors or unintended bugs in hardware or software or both.
This can cause mayhem at every step of voting which uses electronics, destroying free & fair, acountable and transparent elections in every way. I am going to tell you all about it in simple yet detailed way in many subsequent essays on this website.
What if I told you electronic voting takes all meaningfullness away from the important step of assuring zero votes before voting begins, thus killing fair vote?
What if I told you electronic verification of voter identity on voting day can make it a child's play to prevent a voter from voting even if their name is clearly on the list, and blame it on 'technology glitches', thus again killing fair vote?
What if I told you that poll list (list of voters who actually voted or polled, participation list) prepared electronically can be faked to match fake vote counts,thus making accountability and fraud detection caross these steps impossible?
What if I told you that using electronics both for voter identification and marking/recording vote can totally destroy secret ballot and hence free elections?
What if I told you marking intended candidate for vote electronically could actually fool voters and mark their vote for someone candidate instead of the one they intended to mark? What if I told you that whether the vote is marked electronically or non-electronically, recording the marked vote by electronics could again fool the voters, give their vote to some other candidate, while giving them a false indicator that their vote went to the correct candidate? Total disaster on transparency and fair vote!
What if I told you even counting and tabling of votes electronically, whether they were marked and recorded electronically or non-electronically, can completely sabotage election result integrity & people's will?
What if I told you that digitization across every stage of voting allows rigging and faking of records across all the stages consistent with each other? So then, even end to end audit of all records will not be able to reveal massive election frauds!
What if I told you that all these things I tell aren't just conceptual, aren't just theory? What if I told you occurances like these have been documented in elections of many countries which tested or used electronic voting? What if I told you that many of these countries wisely discarded electronic voting after such experiences?
What if I told you that in countries which have foolishly continued electronic voting, especially nationally, the 'elected' leaders are acting like dictatorial thugs, causing economic mayhem, massive protests, civil war situations and even building up to international war type situations?

So why am I telling you all this anyway?

Straightforward reason : India is in a grave and urgent crisis. We are no longer a democracy. The root cause is EVMs, and it will take all Indians united together to get rid of EVMs, get rid of EVM-propped dictatorial governments and restore democracy. And we are running out of time!

Feeling curious yet?

That's good. Because unless we know the problem, we can't solve it. What if I told you that the problem in question isn't new? What if I told we are having EVM rigged government not just since 2014, but since at least 2009, if not 2004?

Feeling concerned yet?

You should. If you notice, I claim that both UPA2 (2009) and NDA2 (2014) won by EVM rigging. How is it possible that both rival governments can rig our EVMs? Maybe UPA1 when in power had the means to rig EVMs for UPA2. But how could EVMs in UPA2 be rigged for NDA2 in 2014? The secret behind that is extremely worrisome. Since 2009 Loksabha, if not earlier, our elections are not only rigged, but rigged by foreign hand. The rigging is done for one government or another, to make it seem real and keep people oblivious. The rigged government in turn serves interests of that foreign hand in seamless continuity with the previous rigged government, even at cost of greatly harming India and Indians. Our democracy has become a puppet show run by a foreign power. This foreign power has the motives to rig our EVMs, the ability to rig our EVMs and it is also blatantly obvious that it has reaped rewards of doing so, while harming India. But we will come to those details later.

Feeling alarmed yet?

You really must! Even if you are skeptical about my claim of foreign hand, you must! Even if you to choose remain skeptical about it after I present a lot of circumstantial evidence, hisorical facts and conteporary event patters in future essays, you must. Why? Because whether we agree on the foreign hand aspect or not, India is fast hurtling towards full dictatorship through rigged EVMs and the signs are getting more and more visible. In fact, democracy is dead since 2009 if not 2004 because EVMs killed genuine elections. But for a few years these democracy killers handled you with kid gloves, trying make everything seem ok, while stealthily pushing many undemocratic things forward, most alarming of which is Aadhaar.
But now the gloves are off. The extremely insecure and invasive Aadhaar is being made mandatory without even a scant regard for your well-being. Judiciary is also inexplicably delaying the main crucial Aadhaar case hearings for almost 2 years now while Aadhaar is being forced through lies and coercions and rights and security of Indians are being destroyed. If this continues will our court remain any different from a dictator's banana court? At the same time, India's natural resources are being hacked away for projects benefiting the foreign hand. The GST tax structure is being brought into place which destroys federalism, puts supreme financial powers in hands of Centre, to be misused against people as well as states, and to fund wars, and to destroy our economy at will of Indian dictators or their forign masters. People are being murdered, beaten, raped, lynched for an assorted range of bigoted reasons and a huge show is made out of it. And instead of the culprits, govt is prosecuting the victims in many of the cases! Pellet guns are being used against our own people to make Kashmir boil, to start wars (by paying billions of dollars to foreign hand for weapons), and perhaps bring official foreign hand intervention in Kashmir which India always opposed. See what I mean how foreign hand is reaping benefits of rigging our elections? Anyway again leave that for now. Poor are being trampled upon, personal freedoms are being hacked away. Attorney General recently told Supreme Court that individuals don't even have absolute right on their own body! They are trying to dictate everything, what you can eat, what you can study, what you can wear, how you can pray, whom you can date or marry, etc and it is being enforced by state machinery as well as non-state militia, who are not only being given a free hand, but also tacit and overt support of state machinery in places. I could go on and on about many many indicators of India's slow and then fast descent into dictatorship, but that would fill up a whole book and this paragraph is already getting too bloated to continue. So we leave more of it to future essays
In doing all this dictatorial thuggery, neither Constituion nor Judiciary nor actual will of the people is being respected by the government. Why is it so? My straightforward idea is, this is because the thugs in power do not depend on your vote at all, so they do not need your goodwill at all. Thus the checks and balances that make democracy work are gone!
The most startling example of this was demonetization. So many people died, so many people suffered, so many people lost their jobs, so many farmers and small businessmen incurred losses on goods in stock, stagnation of cashflows, even big companies reported fallen sales. In short it was an economic mayhem. So much so, that I was pretty much assured that BJP will start losing all elections now. But then BJP 'sweeped' various civic and as well as assembly elections right after! Why? Are people fools? Are people masochists? No! It is because our votes do not matter anymore. Even if the EVM rigged government kills a large number of Indians (demonetization came close to that in way) EVMs will keep voting them in, as long as they serve vested interests of their EVM puppt-masters.
In fact murder and mayhem is already being reported in startling numbers in Uttar Pradesh where BJP got a huge majority EVM-rigged govt right after demonetization. BJP is already on the way to a huge Rajya Sabha majority due to all the rigged Assemblies. Next, in 2019 the EVM rigging puppet-masters can fake a huge BJP LS majority and official dictatorship begins in India.
Unofficial dictatorship is already on, even legislatively if you look at the way 40 or so different Acts which were not at all related to Consolidated Funds of India were modified with 'Finance Bill 2017' to bypass Rajya Sabha. In fact they even bypassed the President because the sections were added after the President introduced the Bill in Lok Sabha. Because of this modification in Finance Bill by LS over what Bill President had originally introduced, President had all the logical reason and power to deny his assent to the Finance Bill 2017. But he didn't, because India no longer has a genuine democracy and the puppet masters of Indian govt wanted this.
So who could become your dictator in 2019? I cannot tell. Could be Modi, could be Yogi, could be any other thug that the evil EVM puppet-masters want. But dictatorship is guaranteed if EVMs continue. Your votes don't matter, so you don't matter, your well-being doesn't matter, your rights don't matter and even your life doesn't matter.

Feeling panic yet?

You urgently and definitely must! The doom by EVMs is nearly fully upon us. Not just in India, but around the world. Genuine elections have been wrecked and puppet dictators have been installed by EVMs, around the world. Attempts are being made to do so in more countries by trying to get them to use EVMs.
What sort of doom? World War 3 doom, along with possibly a 'cashless' 'digital money' world forced on people by dictators, where common people are totally helpless, extreme economic hardships & economic crimes prevail for masses and perhaps no human rights exist. World War 1 was in the most direct way started by monarchs. People's democratic will did not matter. World War 2 was in most direct way started by dictators. People's will again did not matter. Regular folks do not prefer war. War is only for profits of the powerful, who even go to the extent of deliberately setting up major wars for profits. Only people's will, only democracy, can keep the world peaceful. But EVMs are the devil that destroy all principles of genuine elections and thus destroy people's will and democracy.
So once again, by EVMs, the world is slipping into dictatorships, while still maintain a respectable facade of democracy on the surface. But just like before the world wars, internal unrest among populations as well as international tensions are beginning to foment in countries that are using EVMs. The is true even in and especially in Asia and South America, which have been relatively peaceful in last few decades. Coincidentally the foreign power that benefitted maxium from the two world wars, and which I strongly suspect is rigging India's elections, is also the one doing advocacy of EVMs worldwide through it's 'democracy promoting orgs'.
Leave aside the global war scene for a while. Let's look at India. Is it merely a coincidence that ever since Modi got 'elected', many 'news channels' keep beating war drums, keep doing constant pro-army propaganda, there is rise in incidents of military skirmishes and soldier deaths at the border, sabotage incidents have increased (which they conviniently blame on Pakistan/ISI/IS), FDI in defense industries has been fully opened up, 8 highways with ability to act as warplane runways have been proposed? No. It is not a coincidence. India, which has 15-20% of the world's population, and which did not directly face much bloodshed in first two World Wars on its soil, is being groomed as one of the key belligerants in Asia along with some smaller belligerants, against China. This is being done by hijacking our whole govt itself with rigged EVMs!

Panic, but don't panic. Keep calm and save the world.

Yes the situation is extremely alarming, near catastrophic. EVMs started off from simple unsolvable issue of lack of transparency, but because of that they pulverized all accountability, freeness & fairness of genuine elections. When EVMs murdered election integrity this way, people's votes no longer mattered to politicians and hence people's will and goodwill no longer mattered to the 'elected' government. When people's will and goodwill stopped mattering to the government, its democratic checks and balances ceased to exist. Thus democracy itself died off. With democracy dead, people stopped being the masters of their government. The despots pretending to be 'democratically elected' became free to follow the orders of their real masters who brought them to power by rigging EVMs, and who could keep bringing them to power or make them fall irrespective of will of the people. And these real masters seem pretty malicious, making their 'elected dictators' to ruin economies, trample on human rights, change Constitutions, and start wars, in India as well as in many other nations worldwide.
But if democracy is dead, how do we the people solve this huge huge problem of EVMs that killed democracy? Well we still have one lifeline. The EVM rigged dictators and their puppet masters are still pretending that democracy exists. Seize this lifeline! Democracy is like the fairy Tinkerbell. If you believe in fairies, Tinkerbell comes back from the dead and grows strong. So believe in democracy and live up democracy to make democracy come alive!
So how do we live up democracy? Democracy is an ongoing non-violent civil war of ideas. Freedom of expression (FoE) is the most powerful weapon of this war. The best ammo we can fire from this weapon is:

1. Questioning the shady actions of govt authorities (who are nothing but public servants, your servants) which go against public interest
2. Challenging their actions with correct knowledge
3. Making correct and well thought demands in people's interest and not letting authorities off the hook till the people's interest is really achieved.

So fire away your FoE weapons with abandon! The best part is, the FoE weapon once fired can go on leading the attack in larger and larger circles. When you speak the right things, others who listen to it also start speaking. The knowledge, the questioning and the demands spread in wider and wider circles, till the whole nation rises up and reclaims its democracy back! If the government and Election Commission want to keep up the pretense of democracy (which they do), they MUST succumb to the demand of the whole nation to ban EVM and bring back democracy with genuine, transparent, free and fair elections with paper ballot.
In parallel to people's demand, the discourse on free and fair elections through transparency and accountability will also reach many good lawyers and provide them the firepower to build case(s) to get EVMs banned through judiciary. There have been some cases againt EVMs in our decade of EVM use. But I think they were mostly orchestrated and hence didn't really lead to banning of EVMs. Building case for banning of EVMs isn't trivial. Needs a well-rounded expertise of electronics, principles of election integritry, understanding of EVMs as well as Law & Constitution. I have some background in electronics and since few months I am gaining some understanding of principles of election integrity and perils of EVMs. Good laywers have expetise in Law & Constitution and also perhaps an understanding of principles of genuine elections. Together we can defeat EVMs and bring democracy back to life in India! And of course perhaps help other countries too.
But all of that, whether democractic activism by citizens, or judicial activism by lawyers, begins with correct knowledge and understanding. To defeat the devil, we must know the devil. We shall get properly introduced to the devil in the next essay where we Say Hello to my little friend...the EVM!
Yes, the classic reference to Scarface climax. That's exactly how devastating EVM is to democracy!