Question

In the light of recent controversy regarding the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), what are the challenges before the Election Commission of India to ensure the trustworthiness of elections in India?

Answer 1

Approach:

• Discuss the issues and controversy related with Electronic Voting Machines (EVM).
• Discuss the other challenges before the Election Commission of India to ensure the trustworthiness of elections in India.

Recently, the entire spectrum of political parties in India have expressed their reservations about the integrity of its EVMs. There have also been demands to revert to paper ballots.The Election Commission of India (ECI) has been consistently claiming that its Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are unique and that tampering is not feasible under real election conditions with its security protocol and administrative safeguards in place.

Confidence in the integrity of EVMs is important for voters to trust the outcomes of elections. The ECI cannot allow this confidence to be eroded.

Following are the challenges which Election Commission faces and EC must find solutions of these challenges to ensure the trustworthiness of elections in India :

EC’s PROPRIETY
Since the first elections to the present day, EC has established itself as an independent authority by rigorously bringing in revolutionary reforms, but recently the body has met with some criticism for its role in the last few elections. For eg: In a peculiar decision last year, the EC chose not to announce dates for the Gujarat elections but announced dates for the Himachal Pradesh elections which were to be held at the same time. In a democracy, there is perhaps nothing more important than the credibility of the electoral process. EC should try to take every stakeholder into confidence.

MONITORING USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
The social media monitoring mechanism of the EC relies mainly on complaints made by voters and representatives of political parties.
Although EC’s media certification and monitoring committee, which keeps tabs on print and electronic media for advertisements of political nature, also looks out for violations, the fragility of the mechanism came into question during the recent elections. This led to the EC directing the formation of a committee to review the law around the violation of the model code of conduct and study the use of social media and advances in ‘other means of communication’ as some public relations firms are actively being deployed to shape public opinion online. With the increasing use of mobile-internet technology, the influence of social media has also risen and it is high time that social media’s content is monitored. Recently the EC conceded that it was important to monitor the influence of social media on elections.

VVPAT & EVM
EC has decided to use VVPATs in all future elections, it is yet to take a decision on tallying all votes cast through EVMs. The EC claims that there are no instances of mismatch between the votes cast and the paper trail tallied, the EVM tampering controversy is still alive and proving the credibility of EVMs will continue to be a challenge for the poll watchdog.

PAID NEWS
Paid news continues to be a menace for the EC. While the EC has already taken up the issue with the law ministry, seeking that paid news be treated as a cognisable offence, nothing has been done so far. The most challenging part for the EC is to establish that the news has been paid for. Even though there is circumstantial evidence, there isn’t much to prove it on record.

ELECTION EXPENDITURE
One of the biggest tasks before the EC will be to keep a tab on election expenditure by political parties and check bribery for votes. Some estimates suggest that 20-30% of unaccounted money mobilised by candidates is spent on items such as materials for rallies, vehicles and posters, apart from gifts and cash allegedly being showered on voters. The need is to scrutinise expenditure independent of the accounts filed by candidates and political parties, and then ask them to show the source of income for the expenditure incurred. Every candidate and party must disclose spending at each level beginning from the polling booth to the national level. The claims should be open to challenge by watchdog bodies, rival parties and the media. Technology and the use of big-data analytics will help the EC firm up actual spending.

Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, a couple of procedural changes will bring credibility to the voting process. At present, after casting the vote in EVMs, the printed paper is directly dropped in the box (the voter only has seven seconds to see this). Instead, the paper should be given to the voter who should then drop it in the ballot box. This was the procedure before the introduction of EVMs. The ECI should introduce a new procedure wherein the manual counting of the printed ballots has to be done before announcing the result if the difference between the winner and the loser is less than, say, 10%, and the loser demands a recount. In a democracy, elections should not only be fair but should be seen to be fair. By shoring up its image and bringing in some more transparent reforms, the EC can restore faith in elections.