EVM paper trail used for first time

The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) with electronic voting machines was used for the first time to count votes in Nagaland's Tuensang district Saturday.

According to an Election Commission statement issued Saturday, polling for the bypoll to the Noksen (ST) assembly constituency was held Sep 4.

Under the VVPAT system, developed by the Electronics Corporation of India Limited and the Bharat Electronics Limited, a printer is attached to the balloting unit of the voting machine.

When a voter casts vote by pressing the button, besides a red light glowing against the candidate's name and the party symbol, the printer generates a paper slip containing serial number, name and party symbol of the candidate for whom vote has been cast.

The voter can see this paper slip through a window covered by glass on the printer. This enables the voter to verify whether the vote cast has been correctly recorded.

After some time, the slip automatically gets cut and falls into the box permanently attached below the printer.

In case of doubt, the paper slips can be counted at the time of counting and tallied with the number of votes recorded in the voting machine's control unit.