he said that Election commission Officials snatched EVMs from a counting center in Varanasi and alleged that the Election Commission could no longer be trusted.
These allegations may be quite serious but are no longer surprising.
There are hardly any elections in India when political parties allege EVM hacking or manipulation.
The Election Commission has denied the allegations on every occasion, saying the machines are “unhackable”.
But are they? Experts think so.
In 2019, a committee of experts set up by a poll panel concluded that EVMs are tamper-proof when several opposition parties made allegations of hacking.
The committee in its report said that since there is no networking component in EVMs, it is impossible to manipulate them remotely.
“Tampering is possible only with physical access and the elaborate sealing process of EVMs carried out by the ECI prevents this from happening,” it had said.
The Election Commission has also said the same thing.
“… ECI-EVMs are not computer controlled, stand alone machines and are not connected to the Internet and/or any other network at any point of time. Hence, there is no possibility of hacking by remote devices,” said an election commission in 2017 Said in the press release.
Now let’s come to the allegation of physical molestation.
The same authors suggested that tampering with EVM distribution in constituencies makes it very difficult.
The EVMs are distributed to all the constituencies through randomisation. The EVMs used in India consist of two units: BU, Balloting Unit and CU, Control Unit. BU and CU are freely distributed and both are linked on polling day. Livemint.com cited the findings as saying that if any one of them has been tampered with or altered, they are inconsistent.
The Election Commission also made a similar statement in its release saying that tampering at the producer level is impossible.
“After manufacturing, EVMs are sent from within a state and from district to district. Manufacturers are not in a position to know for many years which candidate will contest from a particular constituency and what will be the sequence of candidates on BU Further, each ECI-EVM has a serial number and the EC can use EVM-tracking software to find out which machine is located where from its database. Hence, any manipulation at the manufacturing stage is ruled out. goes,” it said.
But can a Trojan horse be included in the chip in the CU?
The EC clarified that stringent security measures make it impossible to field Trojan horses.
This way:
* Once the ballot key is pressed in the CU, the CU enables the BU to register the vote and waits for the key to be pressed in the BU.
* During this period, all keys in the CU become inactive until the entire cast of votes is completed.
*Once any key (Candidate Vote Button) is pressed by a voter in the BU, the BU transmits the key information to the CU.
* The CU receives the data and accepts it by flashing the corresponding LED lamp in the BU.
* After enabling the ballot in the CU, only the ‘First Key Press’ is realized and accepted by the CU.
*Thereafter, if a voter continues to press other buttons which are of no use as a result of those subsequent key presses there will be no communication between CU and BU, nor will BU register any key press Will do
In simple words, there can be only one valid key press for each ballot enabled using CU, which is the first. Once a valid key press (voting process) is completed, there will be no activity between CU and BU until a second ballot enabling the key press is created.
Therefore, according to the Election Commission, it is impossible to send any malicious signal to the EVMs through so-called “sequenced key presses”.
VVPAT
Like many US states, paper trail with EVMs has been made mandatory in India too.
Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is an independent system involving machines that allows voters to verify that their votes have been cast as intended.
The Election Commission says that because of VVPAT, the voting process has been made more transparent for the voters.