Protecting voting machines

Electronic voting machines should be reviewed and updated

The 2014 general elections have been punctuated by many reports of malfunctioning electronic voting machines, or EVMs. In Pune and Jorhat, for instance, defective EVMs were "transferring" all votes to a given party (different parties in these two cases), regardless of the button pressed. It is time the Election Commission reviewed the technology underpinning these devices. The Indian EVM was designed over 30 years ago and that is the equivalent of prehistoric in the electronics industry. Many units are also physically old. It is not surprising that equipment misbehaves due to wear and tear. A review would also address persistent worries that the machines can be hacked.

It is indisputable that the induction of EVMs has made elections smoother and more secure. These are difficult to physically capture. EVMs are also better for the environment. They drastically reduce the need for paper. Reusability also leads to cost savings. Finally, EVMs facilitate fast, error-free counting. But there have been rumblings that it may be possible to tamper with these machines. The Election Commission perhaps places too much reliance on physical security and an assumption that hackers would be unable to gain familiarity with the machine's circuitry. In between elections, thousands of EVMs are stored in godowns. It would not be terribly difficult for a hacker to gain physical access and experiment with a device. In fact, an international team of hackers did precisely this in 2010, when it demonstrated two ways in which EVMs could be hacked using a unit stolen from a warehouse. One of those two demonstrations was through mobile phones.

The Supreme Court has asked for a backup of electronic voting in the form of a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). In VVPAT, a printer is added to the EVM to print the vote record. The voter receives, or sees, a paper printout confirming the vote has gone to the desired candidate. The Election Commission is introducing an experimental VVPAT system in seven constituencies in 2014. A VVPAT eliminates one form of fraud (at the time the button is pressed), but it may not address other hacks. It may be possible for a smart hacker to find other ways. For example, even an EVM's manufacturer is unable to tell if somebody replaced its integrated circuit with a copycat integrated circuit, which had different instructions. Votes are recorded only in each individual EVM without any backup; in some cases, the units are stored for weeks before counting. This creates a window of opportunity for somebody to tamper with vote counts.

Hacking that requires physical access would certainly be tough. But it wouldn't be impossible, and the rewards would be huge. Each EVM carries 3,840 votes; since elections are often decided by smaller margins, one compromised device could swing a seat. One way to eliminate this possibility is to take secure, encrypted backup copies of votes onto mirrored servers immediately as polling closes. EVMs could also definitely be made more modern and, thus, more secure. The introduction of electronic polling has had a transformational effect on election logistics. The machines used, however, should evolve with the times.