India's twin election problem: No machines, dysfunctional machines

While the solution to malfunctioning VVPATs requires a common-sense solution, producing over a million VVPATs in time for 2019 elections seems to be a Herculean task at best

The scenario is tricky, and deadlines tight. The stakes are even higher. The universal rollout of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) envisaged by the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the 2019 Parliamentary elections faces two major hurdles.

Firstly, there are manufacturing tweaks to be done on VVPATs to make them less prone to malfunction and improve their credibility among candidates, political parties and voters alike. The second problem involves meeting the deadlines of manufacturing 1.6 million VVPATs at least six months before Parliamentary elections are conducted in the summer of 2019. While the manufacturers of VVPATs plan to