India Chooses All-Electronic Voting

MaximusTheGreat writes "While the U.S. debates the merits of e-voting, India has decided to have all electronic polls in the next elections for its billion strong population. Though India has used e-voting partially in previous elections, it will be the first time a Lok Sabha (central parliament) election will be held in the country since 1952 without the use of ballot papers. Election Commission plans to use about 800,000 electronic voting machines. Also, taking note from India's experience, other commonwealth countries like Malaysia and Britain will be sending representatives to India to see the use of EVMs during the Assembly elections. On a related note they plan to make voter's identity card mandatory for voting."

How they used to do it in the old days

In the "old days", indians who voted would have their fingers marked with a special dye that would take 2 weeks to disappear. :)

Therefore there was no need for any ID Cards. Sigh, practical technology being replaced with technology that infringes on freedoms.

Re:How they used to do it in the old days

Yes - the marks would last for upto two weeks on honest fingers but crooked politicians and their crafty supporters had developed numerous ways to erase them quickly so they could go back and vote again and again.

Sometimes something as simple as rubbing a peeled potato skin on the fingernail would be enough to erase the mark. I never had the opportunity (or the motivation) to try this but I have this from "reliable sources.."!!

These identity cards will certainly reduce instances of fraudulent voting - and as for privacy concerns - in a country like India with all those other concerns - the cost-benefit just doesn't work out in favour of privacy (and I am talking of the cost-benefit for the man on the street - not for the govt.)

AC

Re:How they used to do it in the old days

As an Indian, I must say that you're missing out a lot about how it was done in the old days:

• It was extremely common for polling booths to be attacked by goons paid by one of the candidates and all the ballot papers destroyed.
• Large numbers of "party members" would vote repeatedly by pretending to be someone else or using special techniques that would remove the ink from their fingers.
• Earlier, results for each voting center would be individually known. This would lead to goons beating up people of those villages that voted against them. AFAIK this doesn't happen in the current system because the EVMs are centrally processed and only constituency-wise results are known.

To summarize, the old system was a nightmare both in terms of fairness and in terms of cost because of the huge population. In comparison, the EVMs in the last elections were a panacea. I'm sure its going to be better this time.

Don't be a luddite. ID cards aren't infringing on anyone's freedom. It sounds especially ridiculous considering that in India we have a long way to go to achieve basic freedoms, like the right of a female to live [gendercide.org]. Voter ID cards and EVMs are the best thing to happen to India's political system in a long time.

They can because...

In a country where the people have little power or voice if someone up high wants it to be that way it is. In the US you have too many people complain. Sometimes Americans need to suck it up. (I'm an American)

No.

As someone who is studying technology deployment in India, I disagree.

Back in India, we face the same problems as any other democracy; heck, I'll argue that we face more lobbyists and well-entrenched groups than you Americans do. The ongoing 'debate' over the tax reform is a perfect example; the central government has been trying to move all the 25 states into a uniform VAT zone for the last 8 or so years without any succcess. Grapevine has it that a solution is possible only in 2005, well after the next round of general elections. We are, after all, one-sixth of all humanity; there's bound to be someone somewhere who doesn't like something for some reason.

The electronic voting machines also had significant problems in deployment; if I remember correctly, they were developed way back in the 80's itself, at the (government-owned) Electronic Corporation of India Ltd [ecil-india.com] (the products webpage doesn't mention voting machines, so I could be wrong on the company) There were just too many groups resisting technology; as followers of Indian politics will note, elections in the 80's and 90's were invariably accompanied by booth-capturing, rigging and voter impersonation. Goondas (that's Indian English for the American 'rowdy') patronised by political parties would often take over polling booths, and stuff ballot papers in them. If you really wanted to vote on Election Day, you'd want to vote early in the day itself; not only to avoid the crowd, and violence if any, but also because someone else would have already voted under your name. And then, there'd be those political clashes, electoral violence, bomb blasts... an endless tyranny making a mockery of our constitutional values.

Obviously, the situation needed some strong action and, as I recall, the then Election Commissioner, Mr TN Seshan (who was and still is a sort of middle-class Indian hero), strongly asserted his Commission's independence from the government de jour, by the following measures:-

a)Paramilitary Forces:-
Not many Indians realise this, but elections in India see the world's largest peacetime movement of troops. All elections these days, unless they are the sub-province-level Panchayat elections, are actually conducted by the federal paramilitary battalions, the Border Security Force (BSF), the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) etc, and not the state police, who report to the government of the day and, therefore, presumably are not to be trusted.[1]

b) Behavioural Changes:-
For a month or so before the actual elections exercise, the Commission enforces a so-called "Model Code of Conduct" on all political parties; among other things, the contestants can't promise soft bribes for their constituents. Compliance is entirely voluntary; the Commission can't, for instance, pull someone up for breaking the Code, but then, which contestant in his right mind would want to be caught on the wrong side of his constituents' ire?

This was certainly the case between 1991 and 1995/6, until elections were announced in the teeny-weeny state of Goa [photoguide.to], bringing us to step (c), technology.

c) Technology:-
Only after the above two easy-sounding, but difficult-to-implement steps did the Election Commission turn to technology. Even there there has been significant backlash; as I recall, there were many states that were tardy in issuing voter ID's. And even in that, the voter ID's are technologically-minimal; they are basically laminated printouts of a voter's digital pic, his name, address, date of birth, and the EC's hologram.

The end result is a vastly improved electoral process. Booth capturing and rigging will now completely vanish, even if it's only because the goondas haven't as yet figured out how to crack the voting machine. And then, there are obvious questions as to the quality of the nincompoops we elect.

That, however, shouldn't d

A very sensible decision...

Saves a lot of money, the technology and hardware is indigenous, no additional security issues as compared to the ballot-box-ink-paper technique etc.

All in all, a sensible decision. The voter electronic id-cards are also almost completed - about 75 cents a card. When that gets fully completed, elections in the biggest democracy in the world can be conducted smoothly.

-

Outright Discrimination.

Oddly enough, I'm Indian, so don't take my opinion as too slanted.

Anyhow, let me start by saying that this is a very thrilling next step in India's experiment with democracy. It'll be awesome to see the elections being conducted with minimal fraud (hopefully combated with the ID cards), but I see a very serious problem.

0.75 USD is the equivalent of about Rs. 30, and in a country where the Rs. 30 can buy a gourmet meal for 5 (well, I'm exagerating, but please try to see my point), it strikes me as quite a price for a vote. See, voting is no longer something that anyone can do, in fact, it's a form of discrimination. If the government can't teach the masses, and then they charge a ridiculous amount of money to get a ID card for an election, they're essentially telling the poorer (and likely less intelligent people) that they can't vote.

We're too quick to forget what happened when the United States decided that it was time for competency tests, and black people were discriminated against.. because comptency was directly in line with socioeconomic status. This is unfair to the poor people. It's a sad day in India when these 800,000 machines (which will hardly service 1,000,000,000 people) are spread through India.

Obviously it's nice to see voting become fast and easy .. more accuracy and probably less corruption, but the poor people need in. It's their country too.

I'm not crying about the 0.75 USD, I'm just saying that it's a form of discrimination. They shouldn't be required to have these ID cards, which they will be required to have. Even if it's not a requirement, it'll be a major turn off to voting.

Well, there's my 0.75 USD.

Re:Outright Discrimination.

I will try to remove some misunderstanding about the voter's ID card and the voting machine --

1) The cost of Voter's ID card is paid by the govt. Individual voters do not pay anything. I just had to go to a temporary office in my locality to get photographed and pick it up in about 10 minutes. So, the 0.75 USD discrimination problem that you point out is non-existent.

2) The voting machines simply record the number of votes for each candidate, and no record is created about who voted for whom

3) Election commision in India is an independent constitutional body and has been know to re-conduct the elections in voting areas with slightest hint of fraud.

4) Each voting booth in India is allowed to have has one representative from each candidate to ensure that the other candidate does not tryto defraud the voter. This is not perfect but ensures that the fraud when it happens does not skew the result too much.

5) The voting machines contain no OS. The code is in assembly in tamper proof chips, making it very hard to hack

6) The voting machines are not linked together over a network. This implies that to tally votes the machine has to be taken to a central station where again representatives from each candidate ensure that no wholscale fraud takes place.

But with everyone in India voting

Who will do the tech support for the voting machines?

Re:But with everyone in India voting

EVMs are programmed in assembly language, have a serial port to interface to the counting PC, and are very simple devices. Less than 70 machines failed when 11,000 were used last year - and most were fake votes and rigging, not machine failures or bugs.

Tech support normally involves calling up the Area Officer and replacing a new machine. The machine itself costs about $100, IIRC.

-

Great...

India is holding their entire election online, and I can't even get cable modem service in Silicon Valley. Christ almighty.

Debating the merits is good!

While the U.S. debates the merits of e-voting

This makes it sound like a bad thing ... "India is pushing ahead and leaving the USA behind". Actually, it is a fine idea to debate the merits before taking a big risk on the key process in democracy.

I'm surprised India is doing this ... electronic voting has not been trialled on anything remotely this big. AFAIK no city/state/province has run an all-electronic election, let alone an entire country. Great initiative, plenty for everyone to learn from, but seems just a bit dangerous.

BTW Does this mean the end of election night coverage?
(End of day, sorry you lose,hasta la vista)

All?

All electronic means the ones voting are electronic also?

Voting, numbers and caste system

First off, this election will generate a"vote-databases" larger than about any other election on this planet. Given that about a billion people live in India, there will be hundreds of millions of votes. Although electronic voting is nothing new (in the Netherlands the elections are almost 100% electronic for years now), the sheer scale of this electronic election makes it interesting.

But exactly how many people eligible for voting are there? Obviously, a significant number of the about 1 billion inhabitants will be under the legal voting age.

And then, how about the caste system? Please note that I'm not trying to be a troll here: I know the caste system doesn't officially exist anymore, but I've been in India for work for a month, and I found it pretty clear that people from different castes are treated differently. Are people from the lowests castes (or the caste-less) discouraged from voting in any way? And does the mandatory presentation of an ID-card prevent many of these people from voting?

Is there anyone who can provide a decent, and honest, background on this? It is an interesting sociological issue.

Re:Voting, numbers and caste system

But exactly how many people eligible for voting are there? Obviously, a significant number of the about 1 billion inhabitants will be under the legal voting age.

About 40% of the population...

And then, how about the caste system?... Are people from the lowests castes (or the caste-less) discouraged from voting in any way?

Actually, it's the other way round. People from the lowest income levels are actively enlisted for voting, since they can be easily induced with comparatively lesser money.

OTOH, voter apathy among middle-class is quite common in India.

And does the mandatory presentation of an ID-card prevent many of these people from voting?

No way.. refer above, it's encouraged.

Is there anyone who can provide a decent, and honest, background on this? It is an interesting sociological issue.

Actually the caste system existed in India for 'functional reasons' and not as a means of discrimination. Politicians have groomed these into vote-banks by offering money and power.

Most caste-names are actually job-functions (like Carpenters, Woods, Smiths, Masons, Butchers you come across in Western socities). Present social conditions have actually made things screwed up for all concerned. A case in point - the coconut-tree climber charges about 20 cents a tree, which yields about 20 nuts per month. These guys are heavily sought-after and start charging 40 cents plus 2 nuts (about 10 cents) now. They send their children to 'convent' schools, who in turn learn skills different from their 'inherited' skills. Most 'caste' people in the current generation aren't capable of performing their roles honorably any more. And so it goes on...

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Re:Voting, numbers and caste system

Actually the caste system existed in India for 'functional reasons' and not as a means of discrimination. Politicians have groomed these into vote-banks by offering money and power. ... Present social conditions have actually made things screwed up for all concerned.

Shit.

Same old RSS propaganda material.

Most common excuse given to hide from the fact that the caste system has always been extremely unfair to the lower castes, a highly shameful, dehumanizing and severe abuse of human rights.

(I am an Indian) I too used to believe what you said, having been brainwashed by the right, but I'm sorry to tell you that there's no truth to it. I've done courses on Indian history, and I assure you that it doesn't become any better as you go back in time (which is contrary to the central dogma of Hindu philosophy). Buddhism and Jainism arose more than 2500 years ago as rebel movements against the caste system. (If you haven't guessed it already, I'm atheist).

Here's an interesting tidbit: the concepts of karma and rebirth arose (partly) as a method of oppression of the underprivileged, as a tool to convince them that the misery they faced was the result of their own faults in "previous births".

Anyway, my rant is done. I'll accept two things you said: dirty politicians leverage caste to achieve their dirty ends, and that it initially arose as a functional classification. But there's no way at all you can justify it, its been sickening and shameful almost from the beginning (the dividing line is, IIRC, between the "early Vedic" and the "later vedic" periods, when Varna became "Jathi".)

Mandatory Voting cards

They propose to make having voting cards mandatory even if all voters do not get the cards. This could be a cause for concern if there are hassles getting the cards. I would like to know the reason only 65% of voters have a card. Is there any way to get a card on the day or is there a cutoff?

Voting is voluntary in India (source: Subas Pani, Deputy Election Commissioner, Election Commission of India, subaspani(a)eci.gov.in) so I guess it doesn't matter much.

They have only 1500 voters at each polling station so vote rigging is kind of limited in effect (there are always ways and means I realise).

I'm interested to see how this goes for them.

OK Crackers

Vote repeatedly for me and I promise do something about all the outsourcing from Europe and the US Timesprout Soon to be Leader of India

Outsourced voting system?

Will India outsource the development of their voting system to some of those (R)USA voting machine 'companies'?!

Which box and OS??

Anyone know what kind of software and OS these e-voting boxes use?

Re:Which box and OS??

They are using two kinds of voting machine, One from ECIL and another from BEL, both government owned companies(from the article).
A bit of googling bought their sites up. ECIL webpage is pretty low on details, but BEL gives some info here [bel-india.com].
Apparently no OS is used, they have coded assembly right into the chips, so virtually tamper proof.

Re:Which box and OS??

Ok!! This is an older story from March'2001.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20010312/main4.ht m

How to tamper with voting machines!
Prabhjot Singh
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, March 11
Can electronic voting machines (EVMs) be tampered with?


"Yes", says Mr Amarinder Singh, president, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee, supporting his assertion by giving a demonstration of how an EVM with a cleverly programmed chip installed in it can transfer votes polled by one candidate to another leaving no remnants of the original voting pattern.

"Convinced that these EVMs can be manipulated, we are going to make a presentation to the Chief Election Commissioner, Dr Manohar Singh Gill, in New Delhi next week and request him to revert to the original system of voting using ballot papers. If the commission does not listen to us, we will have no choice but to knock at the door of the judiciary to get EVMs out of the elections," asserts Mr Amarinder Singh.

Capt Amarinder Singh demonstrates how a "fudged electronic voting machine" works. -- A Tribune photo by Parvesh Chauhan

Mr Amarinder Singh carries a set of EVMs, including the control unit, which during elections remains with the presiding officer of a polling station, and gives a "demonstration of how the programmed chip transfers the votes of one candidate to another".

"We got suspicious about what we call 'sophisticated booth capturing' when we found that there was 129 per cent increase in the votebank of Akalis at Nawanshahr, 100 per cent at Sunam and now 65 per cent at Majitha. The ruling party did well wherever EVMs were used while at other places, we did well. This we did by analysing all elections in the state since 1997," says the PPCC chief, admitting that "my wife and Mr Jagmeet Singh Brar were elected to the Lok Sabha from constituencies where EVMs were used. But till that time, for the ruling Akali Dal, EVMs were something new and unique.

"But once they put their electronics experts on the job, they could immediately find a solution. Whatever the Election Commission says about EVMs is not true. The mother boards, after being removed from the EVMs, do not crash but work perfectly after being soldered back in the machine. Similarly, wave welding, which the Election Commission maintains is not available in India, is very much available at various places in the country," asserts the Punjab Congress chief.

"We put our hardware and software experts on the job. They not only came out with different programmed chips but also revealed how these EVMs had been condemned the world over. Many countries, including Germany, France and the UK, had gone back to the conventional ballot paper polling by discarding the EVMs," he said before giving a demonstration of how an EVM with a programmed chip installed in it "works wonders".

"A programmed chip will not cost much. It is both timed and programmed to convert the votes polled by one candidate to those of another. It is only the final position that will remain on the hardchip or all three memories, thus leaving no scope for anyone to find out the original pattern of voting," he says during the demonstration. "Seventeen votes are cast of which three go to candidate number 1, one each to candidates number two and three, 11 to candidate number 5 and one to candidate number 7. And after a while, when the votes are counted, the machine gives 13 votes to candidate number 1 and four to candidate number 2 and nothing to the rest.

"So each machine can be programmed to transfer, say, every third vote polled by the Congress to the Shiromani Akali Dal. In the Chamunda Devi area, which is a traditional Congress stronghold, our candidate lost during the recent Majitha Assembly byelection. This strengthens our conviction that EVMs were programmed.

"Let bygone be bygone. We do not want this 'sophisticated booth-capturing' to continue anymore. We do not want EVMs but want that in all future el

A major issue

A major problem with these new voting machines is that they do not allow you to cancel your votes without letting others know. If you want to cancel your vote (in case if you don't like any of the candidates), you will have to fill up a form and submit it to the officer in charge. During the ballot era - you could put the mark beside two or more candidates, and your vote would get cancelled automatically. Of course, one can abstain from voting altogether, but in that case, chances are that the local politician's pet goons would cats the vote in your name :-).

How does electronic voting equal e-voting

From what I gathered from this article, they're using electronic balloting machines - or am I missing something?

EVMs prevent fraud

Elections in India are generally marvellous exercises in democracy. In national elections, hundreds of millions of people of many different kinds cast their votes and elect their representatives. Many people doubted whether democracy would flourish in India, but they are proved wrong after every election. However, the fact still remains that there are still a lot of irregularities in the electoral process.

The bulk of the states have generally free and fair elections. The poorest states, especially those in the North, do not. There, the local strongmen actively use force to swing voted to their side and in a lot of constituencies it is not the most popular candidate who wins, but the most popular. In the poorest of the poor states, this fraud happens on a very large scale.

Today, vote rigging is a very simple exercise. All you have to do is get a bunch of very strong men with weapons of some kind and visit each polling station one by one, threaten the officers there and stamp the ballot papers in your favor. The more organized efforts include printing fake ballot papers and having them counted.

Now that EVMs have been introduced, the potential for localized fraud will be several restricted in some ways. Fake ballot papers cannot be printed, votes cannot be changed or removed. However, the local strong men and criminalized parties will still be around. They will still be able to threaten/cajole/buy people and subvert the democratic process. These problems are more systemic and will solve themselves with the passage of time.

Centralized election fraud is a very different matter. On paper, it looks like EVMs can take care of it. The results of "electronic" elections can be easily verified repeatedly and it should be somewhat difficult to systematically rig EVMS. I'm sure that people will find some way of manipulating EVMs, but it shouldn't knew the results much.

Finally, EVMs have delivered a lot of tangible results in India already. For example, results have been tabulated almost instantly, considerably shortening the political and economic uncertainty associated with elections. They definitely help democracy at every level in India.

Security risks

I suggest that the Indian government reads this study (PDF) about the security of EVMs [avirubin.com] first and then thinks if they really want to have it.

Hopefully pakistan Copies

Pakistan has a long standing of Building weapons and testing them soon after Indians do so, Why Not they take a leaf out of this... Well Maybe, they will have a hacked Electronic Voting System by The Indians, They Fear!

Not exactly the same

This is not quite like e-voting - I don't think there is any computer involved (except in the very basic sense of the term). I got this FAQ [eci.gov.in] from the Election Comission's website. Apparently, there has been a phased approach towards the use of electronic voting machines [eci.gov.in], for some time now.

I would still worry about ballot rigging, etc. I can still see ways in which such things can be manipulated. Other than ballot rigging, my other fear would be privacy. Maybe you could find ways to deduce who voted for which candidate.

Very simply put

India is a country where elections come out fair only because of our always upright election commission and because they are so rigged.

It makes a curious kind of sense -- local politicians in rural areas often pay constituents to vote -- but each constituency (ballot box, rather) is just 1500-odd votes, and hence dwarfed by the size of the country. Also, the worst offenders are usually caught by the election commission, setting examples for the rest.

The other, more dangerous form of rigging elections, is when influential politicians inflate the electoral roll and have people vote multiple times. This happens largely in the metros, because in constituencies with huge electoral rolls and many migrant labourers, fake names are more likely to go unnoticed. The election commission tries to regulate this as much as is possible, but how do you challenge the identity of a man (or woman) who possesses no identification beyond a birth certificate? Especially when you consider migrant labourers who work in big cities, and who often have nothing but names to confirm their identities.

It is to redress this second form of rigging that voter id cards were introduced. As of now they have no other uses beyond identification for voting, and the government has no plans to make them so.

So put it all in perspective, and it makes sense. I am a libertarian by nature, but I understand the bind the election commission is in.

Stop Me if you've heard this one....

... or if its already been posted.

Rival parties came up with some ingenious methods to beat these "ingenious"....oh sorry, "indeginous" machines(this was done in the previous polls... which were in 2001 I guess). Let's take, for example, the two parties I am interested in, The Congress (I) and the BJP. Now, local Congress leaders (hypothetical case), campaigning in villages, demonstrated the EVMs for public awareness purposes. The villagers were told the "correct" procedure for voting.

"To vote for the party of your choice, please press the button that is placed against the symbol for the Congress(I). This will turn your voting machine on! Now, please press the button against the party of your choice."

There was a few other ideas. Anyone else heard of them?

They used electronic voting before 1952??

it will be the first time a Lok Sabha (central parliament) election will be held in the country since 1952 without the use of ballot papers

Do you mean they used EVMs before 1952??

Just joking.

Reminds me of another joke -

Q. What did they use in Romania before they used candles?
A. Electricity.

Need for Electronic voting in India....

Conducting an election for 1 billion people is no easy task, the various costs that the government will incurr on a traditional paper based voting system i) Printing of the ballot paper (paper on which the vote is marked), this takes about 60-70 % of the cost of election thats coz because the crieteria for being a candidate are a) the person must be above 24 b) the deposit was earlier INR 1000 to 2000 odd thats about $25 - $50 max. then the no of candiates used to be around 50, in some places it had touched 100, think of printing a paper with 100 candiates name on it and a few million copies of it, u get the point.... ii) logistics of movement of ballot boxes and personell and the security along with it and personnel payements about 20 - 25 % iii) misc 5% like the security ink, etc the initial cost of acquring electronic voting machines are a bit high, but since the same machines can be used for all public elections, the long term benifits are cumulative and it is clearly visible the electronic voting machines help in reducing the money spent on ballot paper by a minimum of 50% which can be used for other development purposes this system was tested in earlier elections and everyone is satisfied with this system as this reduces the number of double voting (like the stamp is put for two or more candidates) an other voting anomilies.....

Voter identity card

Look, the only thing wrong with voter identity cards is if they are made "difficult" to get. Making access to the right to vote hard is the way that various immoral gerrymnaders were maintained, in particular the "literacy" test for voter eligability is a classic example of how to stop a sector of the electorate from voting, just make the application to get on the electoral role a process that required a literacy test (all for the most logical of reasons of course! Like to ensure that the elector can understand the ballot).

Requiring proof of identity is not a problem, and a card is a pretty reasonable way of doing it, the dye approach is equally reasonable. In Australia, by way of contrast, the whole problem of fraud is largely avoided by making the voting process mandatory (it aint completely avoided but anomalies are much easier to detect). One is registered at a specific location for voting and one is expected to vote at that location (elections are on Saturdays) your name is checked off and clearly if you get there and your name is already checked off then there is a problem. There is a mechanism for absentee and postal ballots for those who are away, but these numbers are few and indeed for many electorates these votes are not relevant for the outcome. Clearly this process would be 50 times larger in india, but that is probable still manageable and there is a strong tradition of voting so making it compulsory shouldn't be impossible. Then the identity fraud problem really goes away (other more overt forms of fraud remain however :-)

Why the rush?

This looks to me like another country trying to gain international attention by adopting a 'sign of modernity'. In other words those making the decision to adopt this have no idea of the electoral implications but want to be seen to be 'with it' and in touch with modern technology.

Electronic voting is extremely expensive, provides opportunities for massive fraud on scales never before seen and makes the voting system opaque to the voters, observers and even candidates. No country, especially not a developing one, can in good faith spend vast somes of money on questionable proprietary technology from mainly dodgy suppliers (guilty of fraud, bribery etc) when there are mouths to feed, hospitals to build and schools to fund.

I won't rehearse all the arguments, but check out our Learn section [free-project.org] for more, or listen to me slug it out with the CEO of VoteHere at the Oxford debate recording here [free-project.org].

OMG: A real use for biometrics?

So you want to make sure people can only vote once but you don't want to require that they have ID cards? How about biometrics?

You go to vote, get a retinal scan stored with your vote. If you vote more than once, [insert appropriate action here: {use the most recent vote | use only unchanged votes | throw away vote | some other action}].

The big security hole is fake retinas being inserted into the database. There's always a point of weakness in the security hierarchy where you might be able to slip in fake data. It's plausible to be able to detect fake retinal images, but that may not be possible. Of course, false data is the bane of any electronic voting device.

The good part, though, is that it allows people to vote anonymously and vote only once without being identified--as long as there's no database that correlates retinas to names, that is.

(Oh my god ... I didn't just use "OMG" did I?)

In other news

Diebold industries supplied approximately 400,000 of the 800,000 machines in the Indian election. The company indicated that some machines were previously slated for the upcoming 2004 election and were sent to India for testing. Election monitors were confused, however, when votes cast for any Prime Minister candidate accidentally began to read George W. Bush, despite the fact that the US President is both ineligible and unqualified for the Indian PM position. Diebold promises to research the bug.

Only 800.000 machines?

800.000 voting machines seems me little to all country.
On 2002 election, Brazil used 350.000 voting machines for 115.271.811 voters identified with
ID cards with a voting period of 9 hours.
We have 329 voters per voting machine or
98,5 seconds to vote.
Indian population is ~5,7 times greater then
brazilian population (~175M), have similar dimensions and literacy.
6 times more people and 2,3 times machines,
seems to me that will be a long wait to vote.

The US had this for awhile

Florda had electronic voting machines but if you didn't press the button hard enough, the parity bit wouldn't be set. This was referred to as an "e-chad".

Its already used in India

1) Electronic machines are used earlier in elections in India.

2) It actually costs less to conduct voting on these machines.

3) It is safe.

And please, people, it's the largest democracy, if they are trying something new, give them a break.

The guy who posted the article need not have added the first sentence.

130 candidates

I had the fun of voting for 1 of 130 candidates in a state election using a paper ballot. Was more fun ;-).

Electronic elections...

It's great that people are turning to e-elections, especially in the Third World, where vote-rigging is more than rampant. Here in Brazil, we have it for some time [slashdot.org]. The system still has some big problems, but I doubt people will want to ever come back to pen-and-paper elections. I sincerely hope India goes the same route of banishing pen-and-paper elections.

Meanwhile, in Florida...

Great!!

I wonder if they will outsource support to the US....

In Contrast...

In contrast, many California counties that recently "upgraded" to e-voting may revert to punchcard ballots in the recall election for Governor this October. There's a low threshhold to become a candidate ($3500 and 65 signatures -- I think), so there's a concern that there may be too many candidates for some of the e-voting systems, which have an upper limit of about 40 candidates for any given race.

Bad move

You can never ever, EVER fully prove that an e-vote was fair. Even if you release the source and have auditors and the whole bit.

I think it was Kernigan that proved that even if you compiled the source yourself, you can't prove that the binary does what you think it does. What if the compiler is bogus and fraudulent? Even if you recompile the compiler, what if THAT compiler is bogus?

There are too many theoretical holes, that even if not true, will keep the conspiracy theorists busy. This is the one single area of human life I would NOT trust to a computer. Instead I would suggest a mechanical counting machine. That way there can be spot-checks by humans while still saving most of the money.

eVoting vs EVM

Correct me if I am wrong, but the US is/was/will be debating eVoting i.e. voting over the internet. This is about India using EVMs - Electronic Voting Machines. They are machines on which you press a button and it records the vote. As was mentioned earlier, they are still taken to a central location and the votes tallied. There is no networking involved.

eVoting is quite different from EVMs, and I don't think the author made that difference in the article

Yeah, won't they be suprized when Saxby Chambliss

and Chuck Hagel win in remarkable come from behind wins.

Read this if you don't understand what I am saying [blackboxvoting.org]

total pop vs. registered voters

What does it take to be a registered voter in India? Here in the states, they make it as difficult as possible (thus slanting the voting population towards the wealthy/conservative). Out of India's Billion people, how many are expected to actually vote on those 800k machines?

Given that India is currently run by the ultra-right fundamentalist party, is the use of electronic voting and an identity card a technique to put up barriers to the rural/poor population? (Perhaps a candidate's brother will use the police to set up roadblocks on election day?)

Smart Move, Implement it in America

You want to talk about saving money and time. EVMs and e Voting are the way to go.

Can you ever prove that a mechanical vote/hand count was fair? The machines are handled by humans who could easily throw out votes or modify votes, chad or no chad. With CORRECTLY IMPLEMENTED online voting, you can nearly assure who is voting is who they claim to be. There are no ambiguous votes with a survey and confirm screen. You can also reduce the number of people involved in counting the vote tremendously, and you remove things like the Electoral College (a HUGE source of misrepresentation during presidential elections).

..you can't prove that the binary does what you think it does. What if the compiler is bogus and fraudulent?..

Using that reasoning, the firm in charge of making the voting machines could build a skewing device into them as well. There will always be people in charge of talling votes. We'll know if there is something horribly wrong, just like with standard elections. Certainly the government could employ a team of cracker-jack individuals to write a secure voting system instead of a firm. If all the source the development team writes was subject to internal review, there would not be a problem. Design the software to treat everyone like a potential imposter/meddler, even the people administering the vote. You could always employ EVMs for those who don't have computers at home.

this has been going on in the US for years

It is just like those mechanical booths that many of us are used to with little levers that you pull down next to the name of the candidate. Or like the machines that scan in the paper ballot to tally the votes.

This isn't some sort of massively networked remote internet voting system that would allow people to vote naked while they scrub off in their internet enabled showers.

So this system sounds much the same as the system in many US cities and towns which either use electronic or mecahnical tallying. But the whole picture ID thing is just a system of control. In the US you just have to show some proof that you live in a place and then they put your name on a list and then when you show up to vote they cross the name off the list. Simple.

Sure they could keep the list on computers and even take your picture and store it against the list, but please don't let us start to force people to carry little dogtags like a fucking cocker spaniel.

A Really Bad Idea

If these EVM's model the voting machines used in the United States, this is clearly a bad idea. Anyone who read the report released earlier by researchers at Rice and Johns Hopkins [avirubin.com] about fraud concerning electronic voting machines has ,at least, serious reservations about not using them. If we throw into the mix India's huge populace, then it is safe to say that vote rigging and election stealing is far from over.

What is the solution to India's voting problems? I am far from qualified to present a solution. But, electronic voting systems is certainly not a solution.The reason for this is that it is very, very difficult to ensure that the software that is used for such systems is extremely secure. In other words, it is nearly impossible to ensure that no cheating will be carried out by the voters, the poll workers, the election officials, the software developers, etc.

The only known solution to this problem is to use a voter verifiable audit trail [verifiedvoting.org], that is a paper account of the voting. By doing this, we no longer care about the accuracy of the software. The software is simply a blackbox that accepts the input of the user and prints it out to paper, which the voter can verify. The point is that the only possible proper use for an EVM is as a user-interface.The machine can help people who are visually or hearing impaired or it may display voting options in different languages, etc. There are innumerable user interface hacks that can help the population. But no matter what, it is nearly impossible to verify security if the EVM's are used as anything other than exclusive user interfaces.

excellent job opportunity for laid off H1B's

politicians will pay top rupees for nerds who can hack these machines to win the elections. The word used there is "rig" or "booth capturing" which describes what happens next, that is stuffing ballot boxes with votes. if the nerds can manage a wireless based hack they'll be in great demand. Thye'll be paraded later on elephants, too by the grateful winner. much more fun than dangling chads.

seriously...

do they use a beowulf cluster or sumething..

Brazilian elections are 100% eletronic

This India election isn't the first to be 100% eletronic. The election of the Brazilian president last year was 100% eletronic. And the Brazilian population isn't as big as Indian, but it's a very large country, with almost 200 million population. So, in a metter of facts, there isn't any big news about this

They've done it before too..

Just to bring to your notice, Electronic Voting was first (ever..) introduced in india, in 1984. Due to the omnipresent politicians, the technology was phased out after just once election. The mindset was that it wouldnt allow candidates to rig elections. duh :) the election being referred to, btw, was a state election, not a national one.

Re:*Shakes head*

India has some of the best medicin and education in the world. Much of the country is still remote though. It's happening, faster than it did in the US/Europe too.

Re:*Shakes head*

I don't understand the Indians. They have more people living in poverty than there are people in the US, yet they build nukes and spend tons of money so they can live on the bleeding edge of [insert thing here].

I don't understand the Americans. They have more people living in poverty than there are people in Spain, yet they build nukes and spend tons of money so they can live on the bleeding edge of [insert thing here].

So what the FUCK is your point?

Re:*Shakes head*

Funny, a lot of people in the world look at the U.S and think the same thing. No universial health care!? No free university!? High school students who can't read!? Weird.

Umm no actually

Engage Nit Pick

Not to say that this doesn't occur in India, but the article you refer to is in Islamabad - the capital of Pakistan.

Disengage Nit Pick

Q.

Re:*Shakes head*

just some statistics for those who care (from the cia world fact book).

India
Population - 1,045,845,226
Population below poverty line - 25%
Unemployment - 8.8%
Military Expenditure - $12,079.7 million ( 2.5% of gdp)

US
Population - 280,562,489
Population below poverty line - 13%
Unemployment - 5%
Military Expenditure - $276.7 billion ( 3.2% of gdp)

Re:*Shakes head*

the same reason why americans went to the moon - 1. because you can do it 2. you do not stop living just because poverty is a problem. Poverty is always a problem in every society. While poverty is being tackled should an entire nation stop investing in technology and stuff used to enable one to "live on the bleeding edge of.."? 3. I don't want this to be a troll, but your question is plain silly and condescending.

Need for Electronic voting in India.....

Conducting an election for 1 billion people is no easy task,

the various costs that the government will incurr on a traditional paper based voting system

i) Printing of the ballot paper (paper on which the vote is marked), this takes about 60-70 % of the cost of election thats coz because the crieteria for being a candidate are
a) the person must be above 24
b) the deposit was earlier INR 1000 to 2000 odd thats about $25 - $50 max.

then the no of candiates used to be around 50, in some places it had touched 100, think of printing a paper with 100 candiates name on it and a few million copies of it, u get the point....

ii) logistics of movement of ballot boxes and personell and the security along with it and personnel payements about 20 - 25 %

iii) misc 5% like the security ink, etc

the initial cost of acquring electronic voting machines are a bit high, but since the same machines can be used for all public elections, the long term benifits are cumulative and it is clearly visible

the electronic voting machines help in reducing the money spent on ballot paper by a minimum of 50% which can be used for other development purposes

this system was tested in earlier elections and everyone is satisfied with this system as this reduces the number of double voting (like the stamp is put for two or more candidates) an other voting anomilies.....

Re:So what?

You are from Brazil? BRAZIL??? Ha ha ha ha..... LOL. The only good thing you guys can make is Coffee... Now only if you look at us (indians) and learn a few good things.... BRAZIL??? ha ha ha ha...

Re:What if it was hacked?

What disturbs me is who monitors the systems?

If they do get cracked, couldn't it be by the leaving politicians request, at which the "changes" made by a cracker wouldn't be looked at, they could just let him on by.

A similar problem is with non-electronic means, somebody has to be trusted enough to get the votes from voters, counted, and registered. The system ain't perfect, but India, I believe is cutting out more temptations for folks to fiddle with results.

Anyways, they could use IPv6 to transfer results, I don't know a script kiddie that can even spell IPv6 ;-)

Re:*Shakes head*

Well, at least the Indians won't have the problem of not knowing who the heck is their president because no one really knows where the hell are those ballots from Florida...

Re:*Shakes head*

Get out of your small world, with preconceived ideas - India is a higly complex society - if you are from some country like US and never directly experienced or exposed to the Indian socity you will possibly NEVER know how complex things are there (I have lived in India, US and other countries for long periods of time to know this).

Re:*Shakes head*

Interesting most posters here think you are American ;-), but the short answer is that India is a very big country. Like I said earlier, we're one-sixth of all humanity.

Which is to say, that those country-wide stats often give a very skewed picture; for instance, the state I was born, Kerala, has 100% literacy, and health-levels that match European standards. And yet, as a country, we rank 127 on the UN Development scale, primarily because of bad literacy levels in the North and in the tribal belt in the centre.

Then again, this is not quite bleeding edge technology; as I pointed out earlier, the voting machines are at least a generation old.

Re:So what?

Obviously, you guys need better spin doctors. :-)

Seriously though, there's a lot of hype about Indian tech, some of it is plain stupid. You're right; doesn't help one bit by the fact that most people here are geeks, and geeks by nature are baggard about themselves.

Indeed, if we go all electronic, it's an Indian, or at the best, a sociological achievement; the world's largest administrative exercise has finally discovered 20 year old technology. Nothing more, nothing less.

(I'm Indian, btw)

Re:*Shakes head*

If US didn't turn a blind eye when Chinese supplied all the nuke tech to Pakistan, India would not have the need for nukes. Remember (unlike US) India has two nuke powered neighbours who have in the past waged wars on India. I'm not sure it was correct to test nukes a few years back ... that was definitely politics. India should have just kept the options open and never gone openly nuclear (like Isreal does now). Ofcourse, not having nukes will not remove poverty. In a way, they are cheaper than a war with Pakistan (definitely that has helped prevent a war ... don't know for how long).

Sorry . Re:So what?

Dear All, I just returned to my PC after taking a break for a few days due to flue to find someone has been mis-using my ID to post such comments, which i find personally disturbing. I apologize for comments made in my name.

Re:*Shakes head*

US politics looks like a Microsoft - no choice . only two political parties. the cathedral. Indian political system - many parties. lots of choice. is like linux. will be poor , but will thrive and be creative. (as long as it does not have close political co-operation with US - the friend of despots and dictators worldwide) The cathedral and the bazaar - one more reason why indians thrive these days.

Is ignorance a way of life south of the 49th?

Most Americans treat and think of the (INDIANS), Chinese etc the same way they did Sitting Bull. Americans can be the most ignorant asses on earth when they get on a their horse that runs on lame, ignorant semi-patriotic bullshit. All men are created equal...except...Natives...etc, etc what a pile of bullshit. Either we are created equal or not, it is unequivocal. And I am a Canadian! Money in Hindu society is treated much differently than here. Property is also a different concept. The same as our differences in other social systems, our social system is built upon good ideas but like all good ideas they can get perverted by greed. Indian society and most other human societies are no different.

-1 off topic I need the mod down I am starting to grow a halo!