DEMONcracy - Electronic Voting machines in India - 2

Part 1 is here.

"Our EVMs are 'Different'"

The Election Commission gives the impression that checking the originality of software in EVMs is not possible as OTP-ROM or 'masked' chips are used. That is untrue. Not just the software, even the integrity of the hardware could be checked with the help of an authentication unit (or verification tool). The Expert Committee in its 2006 report had suggested that the manufacturers must undertake diagnostic checks and certify the integrity of both the hardware and the software of the EVMs. However, shockingly, the Election Commission scrapped the project to develop and introduce the "Authentication Unit".

As the project was ready for implementation, mysteriously, the Expert Committee suddenly called it off. The General Manager (GM) of BEL under whose supervision the project was being implemented was transferred out. The new GM informed SecureSpin that the project had been

shelved as per the directions of the Election Commission. Tampering of EVMs being a serious concern, why did the Election Commission shelve the project? Repeated attempts to ascertain

details in this regard did not yield any response from the Election Commission.

"Planned" Shortage of EVMs

Throwing all caution to the wind, the Election Commission of India met the shortfall in the electronic voting machines by commissioning state government owned EVMs. Days before the first phase of polling in 2009 general elections, the Election Commission had directed the chief electoral officers of states (who work directly under the superintendence of the Election Commission of India) to paste "Election Commission of India" stickers on the state government owned EVMs used in parliamentary elections until the elections were over. Accordingly, the Election Commission of India had allowed use of state-owned EVMs in 2009 general elections.

The next time around, if the Election Commission falls short of EVM requirements, don't be surprised if it allows use of EVMs owned by political parties or individual candidates!!

Democracy or DEMONcracy - the saga Indian EVMs - 1

Finally some one had the industriousness to come up with a detailed study of Electronic voting machines in India. U can see it here - there is a link to a free download of the book. Some shocking excerpts from the study

The EVM manufacturers, namely BEL and ECIL have shared the "top secret" software programming code used in the electronic voting machines with foreign manufacturers (Microchip, U.S.A and Renesas, Japan) to have it fused (copied) onto the microprocessors. These chips are then delivered to BEL and ECIL through their local vendors as 'masked' microchips (in case of ECIL) or 'One Time Programmable-Read Only Memory (OTP-ROM)' microchips (in case of BEL).

As the microchips delivered to the manufacturers are 'masked' or 'OTP-ROM', when the microchips are delivered, the EVM manufacturers have no facility to read back the contents in the microchips to establish whether the microchips supplied to them have the original software or not. Shocking, isnt it?

Curiously, BEL and ECIL could have done the 'fusing' of the software onto microcontrollers in their own premises in a secure manner. That being the case, why did they prefer to do this in a foreign country? At whose instance was this decision taken and what were the compelling reasons for taking the decision? Despite repeated queries, there are no answers forthcoming from the Election Commission to any of these questions. There are several decisions taken by the Election Commission which are questionable. First, the Election Commission has used as many as 9.3 lakh old electronic voting machines in 2009 parliamentary elections, ignoring the recommendations of its own Expert Committee. Only 4.48 lakh voting machines (about one third of all EVMs used) are new or upgraded machines and meet the specifications suggested by the Expert Committee. The old EVMs - whose dubious nature didnt have the fullest sanction of the expert committee - its easy to tamper them - were used in congress ruled states.