In India, EVM terminology during this time of the 2024 Central Government General Election season alludes to “Electoral Voting Machines”. As a Web3 person, I tend to link EVMs with “Ethereum Virtual Machines”, that’s why I am clarifying this point for my Web3 audience readers.
I have already introduced these Indian EMVs to my audiences in my last article, explaining that the brain of the EVM, that is the source code of the EVM machines is unaudited.
EVMs can't be trusted to function as expected with it's source code remaining unaudited
Yes, the EVMs arranged by the Election Commission of India(ECI), managed by the Election Commission (EC), for the Indian Citizens to cast their votes have not undergone an independent audit of their source code.
There is no audit report furnished by the EC that certifies that the source code of these EVM machines have been vetted by independent third-party experts to be free from bugs, or malicious code that may program EVMs to record votes differently than what a voter has voted.
Reasons to suspect that EVM's functionality may be set to favor the BJP party
So, we have to trust the manufacturers of these EVMs and the ECI regarding the fair functioning of the EVMs. The point here is that the EC that manages the ECI and the manufacturers of these EVMs looks to be biased towards the ruling party of India, Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP).
The manufacturers of these EVMs are Public Sector Units (PSUs), Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) and ECIL and both these entities have BJP-associated members on their Board of Directors. Therefore, it’s quite probable that these EVM manufacturers are designing EVMs to favor the BJP party members on their board of directors.
Free and Fair elections may not happen in India if EVMs are programmed to favor one party
Well, who knows!!
So, obviously Indian voters have valid reasons to have suspicion over whether the votes they cast on the EVM machine are recorded truthfully with EVM manufacturers having close associations with the members of the ruling BJP political party!!
The question of free and fair elections arises, and the EC is not taking action to ensure that these things don’t happen.
This definitely puts a question mark on the matter of whether the EC is free from the influence of political authorities in power.
Lakhs of EVMs may have slipped into other hands instead of being within the safe custody of the ECI
Now, I leave this here and will look at other issues related to EVMs. Indian EVMs may have been tampered with their source code to favor a political party but even without this issue, there are other issues relating to EVMs making one doubt if EVM tracking and procurement are done efficiently by the ECI.
It’s been found that there is a huge discrepancy in the records of the number of EVMs supplied by ECIL and BEL and the number of EMVs received by ECI!!
An RTI (Right to Information) filed by someone in 2018 got details from the ECIL and BEL on the amount of EVMs they supplied to ECI (Election Commission of India). These details revealed year-wise accounts of EVMs these entities supplied to ECI with EC having claimed they received these EVMs.
However, after evaluating these accounts of the year-wise 15-year supply records of EVMs from BEL and ECIL with accounts of ECI, there is a huge disparity with almost 20 lakh of EVMs delivered to ECI missing!!
ECI has said it has not received 9,64,270 EVMs from BEL and another 9,29,949 EVMs from ECIL that both have vouched to have supplied to ECI!!
Nobody knows where these 20 lakh missing EVMs went to???.
Whereabouts of 19 Lakh EVMs Not Known, Reveals RTI-Based Court Case
What if EMVs holding voted records are replaced with EVMs filled with fake votes?
Now, tabulate this news with news reports that have been emerging during the 2019 Indian General elections of unaccounted-for EVMs being found on private vehicles, and brought by trucks to be stored in strong rooms.
All EVMs are supposed to be tracked and accounted for, from the time its procured, deployed on pooling booths to collect people’s vote, and then taken to strong rooms to be stored and counted.
We can’t be sure that the EVMs that have collected people’s votes are not replaced by other EVMs having pre-recorded fake votes.
ECI has failed earlier in ensuring that the movements of EVMs are tracked accurately with EVMs found on random spots, totally unguarded with their operational history unknown!
EVMs are to be moved with police protection, and their whereabouts have to be disclosed to contesting party candidates and in charge political party booth workers but there have been cases of many EVMs appearing and being transported to without being accounted for.
Those 20 lakh missing EVMs may be available somewhere kept in custody to be used to replace a genuine EVM holding records of people's votes with another EVM filled with fake votes favoring a specific political party.
Scroll Explainer: All you need to know about the latest EVM controversy
Fair EVM election process all depends on the actions of various officials who can be corrupted
The Curruption monster is big in India and it is very possible that the police, the ECI personnel and other officials in charge are not independent but are under the control of the ruling party running the Government who can influence actions of these personnel.
So, under such circumstances, how can any Citizen trust that EVMs are not manipulated or otherwise stolen, replaced with duplicate EVMs containing fake votes. There is no transperancy in the Election process, and it all depends on the ECI and EC fulfilling their duties of conducting the election process honestly.
Still, they can be corrupted and these entities functioning in an unaccountable and untransparent way, only dents India’s free and fair election process which is essential for Democracy.
Can Blockchain provide solutions to improve ECI's EVM management processes?
As a Web3 person, I keep thinking of Blockchain trying to see if Blockchain can improve some of the EVM management processes like maintaining an accurate inventory of EVMs purchased, tracking of their movements and keeping proper account of each EVM that's around.
I know Blockchain provides working solutions to maintain records ensuring the integrity of data. In this era, it's practical to use Blockchain technology for supply chain tracking purposes as well with there being established Blockchain products providing supply chain tracking solutions.
Governments are ok to use blockchain to track us Citizens, store our personal data and track our financial movements on chain but they are not using it to improve their obscure processes.
Well, Indian elections are knocking at the doors and I have written a few articles highlighting some issues, always in the Web3 light, trying my best not to get political. You can give them a read here -
EVM topic trends in India with main elections coming up soon!!
However, I wish India all the best for democracy. I hope for free and fair elections but it's worrying that EVMs have these issues leaving the possibility of the votes cast not being recorded, or have the entire vote records stored in EVM replaced with fake votes made possible by replacing EVM with another duplicate EVM.
Thank you for reading...