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India Chooses All-Electronic Voting 292

Posted by timothy from the how-much-would-a-billion-ballots-weigh dept.
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."
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India Chooses All-Electronic Voting More

India Chooses All-Electronic Voting

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  • How they used to do it in the old days (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Heartz ( 562803 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:50AM (#6557225) Homepage
    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.

    • They still do it... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jkrise ( 535370 )
      The dye is still in vogue, despite electronic cards. So is the manual register. This is used to counter-check any fake / bogus voting.

      -

    • Re:How they used to do it in the old days (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:59AM (#6557260)
      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 (Score:5, Informative)

      by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @05:26AM (#6557490) Homepage Journal
      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.

      • It was extremely common for polling booths to be attacked by goons paid by one of the candidates and all the ballot papers destroyed.

        Without a durable tamperfree record, how can you prevent the same thing with e-voting? I have some solutions--

        1: Each ballot should be linked to a specific voter and should be easily verifiable. This means that--
        a) The computer prints a ballot after confirming the votes.
        b) The ballot contains a bar code that can be easily scanned
        c) The ballot contains a human
    • Therefore there was no need for any ID Cards. Sigh, practical technology being replaced with technology that infringes on freedoms.

      Hmm...I'm unfamiliar with the system, and mozilla seems to be having some kind of trouble clicking on the "mandatory" link, which I assume has more information. However, I don't understand how just having an ID card infringes on freedoms. Sure, it could be used to keep track of who's voting for who, but it can also be almost completely anonymous (the only information the gov

      • I mean, heck, even here in the US where everyone tends to freak out about privacy concerns you need to both register to vote, and have some sort of ID (driver's license or voter registration card) on you to vote.

        Until the "Help America [Not] Vote Act" was passed, ID wasn't reqired in some places. In New York, for example, all you had to do was show up at the polls, and sign the voter roll.

        Your signature was checked by at least 2 independent checkers against the signature on file and you could vote based
        • Don't misunderstand this as some sort of sarcasm, but I got from your tone that you disaprove of requiring an ID ("Help America [Not] Vote Act"), and I honestly don't understand why. Or maybe you disagree with something else that sprung from the act.

          Do you find that your privacy is being violated / there's a greater potential of it being violated by checking your ID rather than your signature? If so, why? Again, don't take this as a sarcastic post, it really isn't, but as I said with my post above, I c

          • My opposition to it comes from the fact that in many places it's getting harder and harder to get government ID, and that government ID is required to vote.

            In Rochester, NY for example, they closed the only downtown DMV office that was left. Now, people in the city have to drive (or try to take public transportation) out to the DMV's in the suburbs. Sure, they set up a "mobile DMV office" that goes to various locations there, but it's been highly ineffective. According to the Democrat and Chronicle [democratandchronicle.com], the
            • So it's a question of whether the act accomplished its goals, not a question of privacy. Thanks for answering my question. Yeah, making the process more complex, then removing nearby offices that make it necessary to complete the process obviously doesn't encourage people to vote.

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

      WHAT???!!! My Grandmother lived in North East India. The corrupt policemen guarding the polls from "Pakistani terrorists" knew most of the people, they knew she would vote for the non-corrupt politician so they told her "You've voted already" and told her to go home. She didn't manage to vote once in the last ten years of her life. I told her she shouldn't even try, some people

  • A very sensible decision... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:51AM (#6557232) Journal
    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. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pavan_Gupta ( 624567 ) <`pg8p' `at' `virginia.edu'> on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @04:25AM (#6557350)
      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.
      • Again.. you seem to have forgotten to factor vote-bank politics. The local 'leader' ensures all citizens in his area, especially the poor, get the card. So, there's your answer to discrimination.

        Secondly, I now shifted my residence about 30 km (20 miles..) from the city and lots of poor 'caste' people live nearby. ALL of them have got the cards sponsored by the 'area chief', who actually does a lot of good work. He's built us a good concrete road, he's doing desilting of a big lake nearby (12 acres - $ 100
        • You've neglected to realize that money can't just be "created" by the "area chief." Money has to be brought up from somewhere, through increased production, or more likely something like increased taxes.

          It will cost the average indian more money, and it'll cost them 0.75 USD per person. Multiply that by 1 billion, and you have a pretty expensive cost (750 million USD) for a nation that has the second largest AIDs problem on earth, the worst starvation problem on earth, and a good set of pretty dire prob
          • I didn't believe it was possible for an Indian to be more clueless than others, on Indian matters - thanks for teaching me.

            If Indians paid less for crappy proprietary s/w, started beleiving in their strengths and stopped listening to ' defer technologically advanced' suggestions, they'd prosper faster.

            AIDS is more of a social problem than a pathological one, atleast in India. Indians pay more money to Microsoft, than AIDS drugs every year. Addiction to MSware is tougher to cure than Affliction with AIDS.
            • I know people lay on the OSS propaganda thick around here, but to say india has AIDS because they buy microsoft crap? What the fuck ever.

      • Re:Outright Discrimination. (Score:5, Informative)

        by MaximusTheGreat ( 248770 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @05:13AM (#6557465) Homepage
        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.

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

          You clearly have absolutely no understanding of electoral mechanics, or the means that can be used to trace and/or track voters. Besides which... How do you know what information the machine keeps? Have you examined its code? Its components?

          "3) Election commision in India is an independent constitutional body and has been know to re-conduct the elections in voting areas with
      • Hi, I'm Indian too, and I don't think I agree with you:

        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

        I don't think the voter is required to pay for the card. The cost is Rs. 30 to the government. But even if we assume that the voter has to pay:

        One only has to get a voter ID card once in a lifetime, not for each election. So the cost gets amortized.

        Besides, if someone values their vote at

        • "If there's a slight cost to vote, then it will ensure that anyone who votes will have some motivation to vote and a reason for choosing one candidate over the other. That way I'd say its a good thing. "

          Google for "Jim Crow" "poll tax"
    • Yes, it's saves a lot of money, because you can fiddle the election without spending a lot. Hmm. But both sides will be doing that, so it could escalate. Oh well either way, the result should appear to be fair whilst having nothing to do with the way the population actually voted; good job nobody trusts exit polls. It's called democracy I guess. Except maybe with an e infront.

  • But with everyone in India voting (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:52AM (#6557234)
    Who will do the tech support for the voting machines?

  • Great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by seanadams.com ( 463190 ) * on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:54AM (#6557241) Homepage
    India is holding their entire election online, and I can't even get cable modem service in Silicon Valley. Christ almighty.
    • India is holding their entire election online

      Not so fast... they use Electronic voting machines, assembly language programmed devices. No internet voting yet.

      Think Indians are dumb to use technology that's so prone to fraud?

      -

    • Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by HiKarma ( 531392 ) *
      Holding electronic elections is a sign of a backwards country, not an advanced one. Electronic elections are more prone to fraud and breakdown unless done with great care. See this site [verifiedvoting.org] for details.

  • Debating the merits is good! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fastdecade ( 179638 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:54AM (#6557242)
    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)
    • 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.

      Brazil (160 million inhabitants) has been doing electronic voting for nearly 10 years, and the last election (2002) [slashdot.org] was "all electronic". The whole system used has been shown to be quite reliable and fast.
    • Ok, "AFAUK" seems to be... well, not that far, after all :) Let me remind you there is a WORLD outside USA. There are sovereign countries out there. Things actually happen out there. So, when you say things like "no city/state/province has run an all-electronic election, let alone an entire country" just try to be sure to specify you are talking about your world, i.e., USA.

  • Voting, numbers and caste system (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ControlFreal ( 661231 ) <niek AT bergboer DOT net> on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:59AM (#6557257) Journal

    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 (Score:5, Informative)

      by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @04:13AM (#6557308) Journal
      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...

      -

      • Re:Voting, numbers and caste system (Score:5, Insightful)

        by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @06:13AM (#6557611) Homepage Journal
        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".)

        • the caste system has always been extremely unfair to the lower castes, a highly shameful, dehumanizing and severe abuse of human rights.

          Partly true. However shame has no ideology and does not have caste as it's bearing. Is the degree of shame different in an unemployed American and an unemployed Indian? So long as people are happy doing their jobs in society, there's no shame involved. I belong to the uppermost caste in the land, but freely mingle with, and actually do some functions 'reserved' for other
          • Everything is as it is. The old system certainly had its strengths and its weaknesses, just as the new system has its own NOW.

            But look at the NOW. The caste system is no more. It is just a shadow left in the minds of people. New generations will sooner or later, be able to drop the past completely. You can too, NOW! If you so choose.

            Don't see your fellow human being as a caste, or put them in ANY comfortable bin like religion, gender, nationality or even soccer team! They are like you, a human being, a sp
        • 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
          Caste system abuses the Human Rights of lower castes, the US dollar abuses the Human Rights of waitresses, meatpackers and recently the US IT workforce. So what's new?
        • 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".

          This reminds me of the christian tropes of 'the meek shall inherit', 'render unto Caesar' and 'vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord' (i.e. wait for your heavenly reward, co-operate with those who enslave you, don't retaliate) encouraging black slaves in the US not to revolt.

          (Note: This is no
    • In some states this is indeed an issue. But, election commsion is an independent constitutional body, and has been known to conduct re-elections in areas with slightest hint of suspicion/problem. One check that makes sure that this is not rampent is the presence of a representative from each candidate in each polling booth, to make sure voting is fair.

      Also, interestingly enough the states(UP, Bihar etc.) in which this is an issue are the very states with low-caste candidates holding the reigns of power in
    • No one is discouraged and prevented from Voting. In fact WE Indians jealously guard our right to vote even though we may have differences in castes. The booth is the only place where you can see a high-caste hindu standing beside a low-caste outcaste. At the time of election we are proud we can vote.
    • People belonging to the lower castes were certainly disenfranchised before in independent India's history. The Indian state was used as a tool of control by the upper castes to a certain extent and there certainly were localized efforts to prevent lower castes from voting to keep them powerless. However, the situation today is very different. The lower castes are generally no longer disenfranchised and many political movements (e.g. the BSP [bahujansamajparty.com]) who represent them have become significant players both regionally

  • Mandatory Voting cards (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fven ( 688358 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @03:59AM (#6557258)
    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.
    • This issue was taken to court . The verdict was that in the absence of a voting card, there are 18 other types of documents which could be used to prove one's identity.(Passport,driving license etc).

      As for why only 65% of population got the cards, I would be surprised if the number was that high.

      Vote rigging was brought down mostly due to the efforts of one of the previous election commissioners. Drastic changes were brought in, such as limiting electoral expenditure, prohibiting canvassing 3 days befo

  • Which box and OS?? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by losttoy ( 558557 )
    Anyone know what kind of software and OS these e-voting boxes use?

    • Re:Which box and OS?? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by watzinaneihm ( 627119 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @04:42AM (#6557402) Journal
      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?? (Score:5, Informative)

      by losttoy ( 558557 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @04:48AM (#6557420)
      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

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @04:35AM (#6557383)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • EVMs prevent fraud (Score:5, Informative)

    by vishakh ( 188958 ) <vishakh@yahGAUSSoo.com minus math_god> on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @04:38AM (#6557393) Homepage
    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.
  • 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.

  • Not exactly the same (Score:2, Insightful)

    by toofanx ( 679091 )
    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 wh

  • Very simply put (Score:4, Informative)

    by harlemjoe ( 304815 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @05:08AM (#6557454)
    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.
  • ... 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 pa

  • 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.

  • Voter identity card (Score:3, Insightful)

    by awol ( 98751 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @06:25AM (#6557630) Journal
    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 :-)

  • OMG: A real use for biometrics? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jolshefsky ( 560014 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @07:19AM (#6557746) Homepage
    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?)

    • 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}].

      You can't do this because it is a secret ballot. The votes just get recorded, there is no record of who voted for who (could lead to some uncomfortable situations).
      No matter what there will always be some weakness. India has a seperate body to monitor elections and they have forced reelection

  • In other news (Score:3, Funny)

    by cspenn ( 689387 ) <financialaidpodc ... .com minus punct> on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @07:39AM (#6557792) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • 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".

  • 130 candidates (Score:3, Funny)

    by berkeleyjunk ( 250251 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @08:51AM (#6558087)
    I had the fun of voting for 1 of 130 candidates in a state election using a paper ballot. Was more fun ;-).
  • 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...
  • I wonder if they will outsource support to the US....
  • 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

  • eVoting vs EVM (Score:2, Interesting)

    by varun ( 174357 )
    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
  • and Chuck Hagel win in remarkable come from behind wins.

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

  • 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. B

    • 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.

      One big difference is that the Indian elections use proportional representation, an early 20th century voting system that counts voter preference rankings to determine results, as opposed to the US's simpler, strictly 19th century plurality voting system where winner takes all, even with a minority of the total votes cast.

      The US actually began to use PR during the

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