WHICH IS MORE RELIABLE - ELECTRONIC VOTING OR PAPER BALLOTS

There are 167 democratic nations in the world. 166 of them are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states. Countries' like Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Vietnam, Jordan, China etc are ruled by monarchs and communists. In all democratic nations, citizens are choosing their national governments and other lower level governing bodies by using paper ballots or EVMs.

Electronic Voting Machines are used mainly by India, Brazil,  Philippines, Belgium, Estonia, Venezuela, UAE, Jordan, Maldives, Namibia and Nepal. Many countries in the world, including USA, England, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands have banned the use of EVMs. In March 29, the Supreme Court of Germany ruled that voting through EVM was unconstitutional. The court believed that transparency in elections is the constitutional right of the people, but 'efficiency' is not constitutionally protected value. In India too, either within the parliament or outside, there have been hot debate over the use of EVMs in elections. EVM was first used in India was in Kerala at Parur assembly election in 1982.

2000 votes can be recorded in an EVM used in India. With 16 candidates in each balloting units, 64 candidates and 'Nota' can be included by connecting 4 units together. These EVMs have been designed by the Technical Expert Committee of Election Commission, in collaboration with Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore and Electronic Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad.

We must go for a relook into the use of EVMs in India for the following reasons. 1. There are widespread allegations about the accuracy of EVMs because of the possibility of technical manipulations. 2. We too may consider this aspect in comparison with electronically much advanced countries like Japan, US, UK, France, Germany etc. as they have rejected EVMs for their elections. 3. Alternatively registered mobile phones can be used for voting. In such case an App or Site can be developed suitably for voting purposes  and individual voter can cast their vote by sitting in the house. Finger print identity can be included in the voting requirements. All polling booths can be avoided by getting the votes registered in centrally installed machines. 4. Alternatively we may also go back to paper ballots for safety and accuracy.

It should be ensured that a uniformly accepted system should be introduced which have proper transparency and reliability. In case paper ballots seem to be more reliable that may be considered. Whatever it may be, it should be a fool proof system.

(Indebted to article, 'Which countries using electronic voting machines?' by Hemant Singh as updated on Feb 6, 2020

K V George