EVMs of 2009 polls used 'improvised features' in the control programs

jun 20, 2009

ha! the smoking gun! the new and improvised [sic] feature? the trojan horse. this is the way the trojan horse was introduced into 180,000 EVMs.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: S. Kalyanaraman

http://sites.google.com/site/hindunew/electronic-voting-machines

EVMs of 2009 polls used 'improvised features' in the control programs

The cat is out of the bag. Azera Rahman reports that EVMs used in 2009 polls use new programs/control systems.

What impact did these program revisions have on the increased possibilities of EVM tampering?

Serious questions arise which cannot be brushed away under the carpet considering the public nature of the election process held for 2009 Lok Sabha elections and the likelihood that further use of EVMs may be declared unconstitutional.

Indiresan Commission Report had noted that *every* key stroke on EVM is logged and recorded. The report dated 19 June 2009 of Azera Rahman (appended below) notes that the programs used on EVMs had been modified and machines with modified programs ("improvised features like in-built clocks which record the exact time a ballot is cast") -- 102,000 units from BEL and 78,000 units from ECIL were said to have been procured in January 2009.

Who audited these 'improvised features'? Was the fact that program modifications were made communicated to the parties contesting the 2009 election so that the polling agents could have stayed alert to identify the new machines with improvised features?

This is a serious issue pointing to the possibility of introducing trojan horses on select new EVMs.

Supreme Court should intervene immediately and issue a stay order on the further use of EVMs until a comprehensive systems audit is completed on the lines of the audit done in USA by academic institutions and computer experts.

Prof. Indiresan Commitee Report on Electronic Voting Machines provided by the Election Commission of India through RTI. 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6794194/Expert-Committee-Report-on-EVM

Blog link http://theoverlord.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/the-indian-electronic-voting-machines/

See discussions at: http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/05/linux-journal-2004-on-evm-fraud.html

Kalyanaraman

Electronic voting machines - the leitmotif of Indian democracy

Azera Rahman (GAEA news)

19 june 2009

The Indian election is about the 714 million electorate, the many thousands who play the electoral field and the virtual army of people working behind the scenes.

But it is also about a pintsized contraption - the electronic voting machine (EVM) - that has become the leitmotif of the world's largest democratic exercise and gets smarter with each avatar.

It not only does the obvious - records the vote - but also notes the exact time it is cast. The new and improved machines also give hourly updates of balloting, besides of course aiding in the counting of votes.

Forget about counting chads, the inconvenient little slips that had tripped the US presidential election in 2000, the EVMs have ensured that the counting of the many million votes is done in a matter of hours. Results of the general election, or an assembly election in one of the states, are declared a short while after the counting start.

In Election 2009 held in April and May, an estimated 1.36 million EVMs were used in 828,000 polling booths across this vast country.

According to Amol Newaskar, general manager of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) in India's IT city of Bangalore, the machines supplied for the elections conducted over five phases have improvised on the older version.

BEL, which is one of the two public sector companies manufacturing EVMs for the Election Commission, has supplied 65,000 EVMs since 2000.

"However, the ones manufactured from 2007 onwards have improvised features like in-built clocks which record the exact time a ballot is cast," Newaskar said.

"Not just that, the EVM also records the exact time when the whole balloting process starts and when the last vote is cast. It gives an hourly update of the number of votes cast, and if there is any unusual trend in the process, it can be easily detected. Thus, the whole process becomes tamper-proof," he added.

For instance, if there is a heavy rush in polling at a particular hour, the officials can be on alert or if a voter thinks that his vote is being tampered with, the exact time when he cast his vote can be retrieved.

The Election Commission, according to Newaskar, placed an order for 102,000 EVMs to BEL for the 2009 general election - all of which were supplied by January.

The other company authorised by the Election Commission to manufacture EVMs is the Hyderabad-based Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) that has supplied 78,000 machines with the improvised features.

For the benefit of the visually impaired, the EVMs also have Braille markings on them.

Costing 9,800 rupees (about $195), it is no wonder that EVMs are a mega hit on the global stage as well.

Bhutan got 4,140 of them for its elections last year and Nepal has acquired them too. And inquiries for the Indian-made election tool have come in from

all over. The Namibian government has placed orders for 2,000 voting machines, while Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria have evinced interest as

have neighbours Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Malaysia, said Newaskar, had also shown interest. According to K.S. Rajasekhara Rao, chairman of ECIL, which supplied the EVMs in the Bhutan elections: "Many others countries like Sri Lanka, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and Bangladesh have expressed a keen interest in acquiring these machines too."

Although the new EVMs have improvised features, most countries want the machines with further modifications.

The basic unit, easy to carry and no bigger than a briefcase, comes in two interconnected parts - the ballot unit, accessed by the voter who punches her vote, and the control unit that registers all related data like the total votes cast.

Most voters find it easy to use.

Vani Mittal, a second year graduation student of Delhi University, did not find using the EVM difficult at all when she voted for the first time in the assembly elections last year.

"The EVM is quite user-friendly. You have the name of the candidate and the party symbol clearly stated; so there is no question of any confusion," Mittal said.

"As a child, whenever my father used to go to vote I used to accompany him.

So I knew how tedious the earlier process was. After deciding whom you want to vote for, you have to fold the ballot paper in a particular manner and

drop it in the box. The EVMs have made the process so much easier," she added.

Even so, to attract voters in the general election, the election office in the capital New Delhi has uploaded a video on using EVMs on YouTube.

"Sometimes people are confused and unaware of how to use EVMs. So, in order to spread more awareness, we have uploaded a training video on usage of EVMs on popular video sharing website YouTube," said Delhi's chief electoral officer Satbir Silas Bedi.

http://blog.taragana.com/n/electronic-voting-machines-the-leitmotif-of-indian-democracy-86599/