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India Chooses All-Electronic Voting
MaximusTheGreat writes "While the U.S. debates the merits of e-voting, India has decided to have all electronic polls in the next elections for its billion strong population. Though India has used e-voting partially in previous elections, it will be the first time a Lok Sabha (central parliament) election will be held in the country since 1952 without the use of ballot papers. Election Commission plans to use about 800,000 electronic voting machines. Also, taking note from India's experience, other commonwealth countries like Malaysia and Britain will be sending representatives to India to see the use of EVMs during the Assembly elections. On a related note they plan to make voter's identity card mandatory for voting."
RTFA. It doesn't say anything about online. It says they're using Electronic Voting Machines. Here in The Netherlands, that means that after the elections people have to bring diskettes from the EVMs to a central location where the totals for the district are calculated, all offline.
Yes - the marks would last for upto two weeks on honest fingers but crooked politicians and their crafty supporters had developed numerous ways to erase them quickly so they could go back and vote again and again.
Sometimes something as simple as rubbing a peeled potato skin on the fingernail would be enough to erase the mark. I never had the opportunity (or the motivation) to try this but I have this from "reliable sources.."!!
These identity cards will certainly reduce instances of fraudulent voting - and as for privacy concerns - in a country like India with all those other concerns - the cost-benefit just doesn't work out in favour of privacy (and I am talking of the cost-benefit for the man on the street - not for the govt.)
AC
electronic voting has not been trialled on anything remotely this big. AFAIK no city/state/province has run an all-electronic election, let alone an entire country.
Brazil (160 million inhabitants) has been doing electronic voting for nearly 10 years, and the last election (2002) was "all electronic". The whole system used has been shown to be quite reliable and fast.
So either we're talking some other country or you just pulled that one out of a hat.
But exactly how many people eligible for voting are there? Obviously, a significant number of the about 1 billion inhabitants will be under the legal voting age.
About 40% of the population...
And then, how about the caste system?... Are people from the lowests castes (or the caste-less) discouraged from voting in any way?
Actually, it's the other way round. People from the lowest income levels are actively enlisted for voting, since they can be easily induced with comparatively lesser money.
OTOH, voter apathy among middle-class is quite common in India.
And does the mandatory presentation of an ID-card prevent many of these people from voting?
No way.. refer above, it's encouraged.
Is there anyone who can provide a decent, and honest, background on this? It is an interesting sociological issue.
Actually the caste system existed in India for 'functional reasons' and not as a means of discrimination. Politicians have groomed these into vote-banks by offering money and power.
Most caste-names are actually job-functions (like Carpenters, Woods, Smiths, Masons, Butchers you come across in Western socities). Present social conditions have actually made things screwed up for all concerned. A case in point - the coconut-tree climber charges about 20 cents a tree, which yields about 20 nuts per month. These guys are heavily sought-after and start charging 40 cents plus 2 nuts (about 10 cents) now. They send their children to 'convent' schools, who in turn learn skills different from their 'inherited' skills. Most 'caste' people in the current generation aren't capable of performing their roles honorably any more. And so it goes on...
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Only the machines are electronic. Manual registers and dye-on-fingers are still used as a second-level check.
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
These identity cards will certainly reduce instances of fraudulent voting
They could just as easily make it considerably easier to vote multiple times.
Elections in India are generally marvellous exercises in democracy. In national elections, hundreds of millions of people of many different kinds cast their votes and elect their representatives. Many people doubted whether democracy would flourish in India, but they are proved wrong after every election. However, the fact still remains that there are still a lot of irregularities in the electoral process.
The bulk of the states have generally free and fair elections. The poorest states, especially those in the North, do not. There, the local strongmen actively use force to swing voted to their side and in a lot of constituencies it is not the most popular candidate who wins, but the most popular. In the poorest of the poor states, this fraud happens on a very large scale.
Today, vote rigging is a very simple exercise. All you have to do is get a bunch of very strong men with weapons of some kind and visit each polling station one by one, threaten the officers there and stamp the ballot papers in your favor. The more organized efforts include printing fake ballot papers and having them counted.
Now that EVMs have been introduced, the potential for localized fraud will be several restricted in some ways. Fake ballot papers cannot be printed, votes cannot be changed or removed. However, the local strong men and criminalized parties will still be around. They will still be able to threaten/cajole/buy people and subvert the democratic process. These problems are more systemic and will solve themselves with the passage of time.
Centralized election fraud is a very different matter. On paper, it looks like EVMs can take care of it. The results of "electronic" elections can be easily verified repeatedly and it should be somewhat difficult to systematically rig EVMS. I'm sure that people will find some way of manipulating EVMs, but it shouldn't knew the results much.
Finally, EVMs have delivered a lot of tangible results in India already. For example, results have been tabulated almost instantly, considerably shortening the political and economic uncertainty associated with elections. They definitely help democracy at every level in India.
Posting messages for the betterment of humanity..
This issue was taken to court . The verdict was that in the absence of a voting card, there are 18 other types of documents which could be used to prove one's identity.(Passport,driving license etc).
,inherent casteist beliefs, widespread corruption are not easy to wipe away.
As for why only 65% of population got the cards, I would be surprised if the number was that high.
Vote rigging was brought down mostly due to the efforts of one of the previous election commissioners. Drastic changes were brought in, such as limiting electoral expenditure, prohibiting canvassing 3 days before the election and a number of others.
However such things still happen; low literacy rates, limited awareness
No one is discouraged and prevented from Voting. In fact WE Indians jealously guard our right to vote even though we may have differences in castes. The booth is the only place where you can see a high-caste hindu standing beside a low-caste outcaste. At the time of election we are proud we can vote.
-------- Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate -- the bombs always hit the ground.
I suggest that the Indian government reads this study (PDF) about the security of EVMs first and then thinks if they really want to have it.
Ok!! This is an older story from March'2001.
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20010312/main4.ht m
How to tamper with voting machines!
Prabhjot Singh
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, March 11
Can electronic voting machines (EVMs) be tampered with?
"Yes", says Mr Amarinder Singh, president, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee, supporting his assertion by giving a demonstration of how an EVM with a cleverly programmed chip installed in it can transfer votes polled by one candidate to another leaving no remnants of the original voting pattern.
"Convinced that these EVMs can be manipulated, we are going to make a presentation to the Chief Election Commissioner, Dr Manohar Singh Gill, in New Delhi next week and request him to revert to the original system of voting using ballot papers. If the commission does not listen to us, we will have no choice but to knock at the door of the judiciary to get EVMs out of the elections," asserts Mr Amarinder Singh.
Capt Amarinder Singh demonstrates how a "fudged electronic voting machine" works. -- A Tribune photo by Parvesh Chauhan
Mr Amarinder Singh carries a set of EVMs, including the control unit, which during elections remains with the presiding officer of a polling station, and gives a "demonstration of how the programmed chip transfers the votes of one candidate to another".
"We got suspicious about what we call 'sophisticated booth capturing' when we found that there was 129 per cent increase in the votebank of Akalis at Nawanshahr, 100 per cent at Sunam and now 65 per cent at Majitha. The ruling party did well wherever EVMs were used while at other places, we did well. This we did by analysing all elections in the state since 1997," says the PPCC chief, admitting that "my wife and Mr Jagmeet Singh Brar were elected to the Lok Sabha from constituencies where EVMs were used. But till that time, for the ruling Akali Dal, EVMs were something new and unique.
"But once they put their electronics experts on the job, they could immediately find a solution. Whatever the Election Commission says about EVMs is not true. The mother boards, after being removed from the EVMs, do not crash but work perfectly after being soldered back in the machine. Similarly, wave welding, which the Election Commission maintains is not available in India, is very much available at various places in the country," asserts the Punjab Congress chief.
"We put our hardware and software experts on the job. They not only came out with different programmed chips but also revealed how these EVMs had been condemned the world over. Many countries, including Germany, France and the UK, had gone back to the conventional ballot paper polling by discarding the EVMs," he said before giving a demonstration of how an EVM with a programmed chip installed in it "works wonders".
"A programmed chip will not cost much. It is both timed and programmed to convert the votes polled by one candidate to those of another. It is only the final position that will remain on the hardchip or all three memories, thus leaving no scope for anyone to find out the original pattern of voting," he says during the demonstration. "Seventeen votes are cast of which three go to candidate number 1, one each to candidates number two and three, 11 to candidate number 5 and one to candidate number 7. And after a while, when the votes are counted, the machine gives 13 votes to candidate number 1 and four to candidate number 2 and nothing to the rest.
"So each machine can be programmed to transfer, say, every third vote polled by the Congress to the Shiromani Akali Dal. In the Chamunda Devi area, which is a traditional Congress stronghold, our candidate lost during the recent Majitha Assembly byelection. This strengthens our conviction that EVMs were programmed.
"Let bygone be bygone. We do not want this 'sophisticated booth-capturing' to continue anymore. We do not want EVMs but want that in all future el
And oh, <aol>me, too!</aol> on the "I don't have MyKad yet" part.
Background for non-Malaysians: "IC" = short for Id. card in Malaysia. MyKad is the new Malaysian identity card with an embedded chip. Looks exactly like a new ATM card. Never could find enough detailed info on them to trust them, but it's supposed able to handle electronic cash, your identification details in electronic forms, PKI, etc. Would be rather hard to forge.
Particularly worrying is using PKI in conjunction to voting. Unless done right, it's very easy to lose privacy -- authentication and anonimity are two contradictory to each other. It's possible (I've read Schneier's books), but it's very hard and troublesome.
People belonging to the lower castes were certainly disenfranchised before in independent India's history. The Indian state was used as a tool of control by the upper castes to a certain extent and there certainly were localized efforts to prevent lower castes from voting to keep them powerless. However, the situation today is very different. The lower castes are generally no longer disenfranchised and many political movements (e.g. the BSP) who represent them have become significant players both regionally and nationally. Of course, these parties are as corrupt and criminalized as the rest. :)
Today, there are still some regions of India where the upper castes wield enough power to shut out the lower castes from assuming electoral expression. I believe these pockets are shrinking and democracy is become more representative with every passing day. This upsurge of lower caste power has created complex political dynamics today, with many competing groups fighting for the largest share of the economic pie.
India does live in two realities. Rural and poor India is still caught up in caste struggle, while urban and rich India could care less (to a large extent). As a result, the reality is infinitely more complex than what I have posted here.
Posting messages for the betterment of humanity..
India is a country where elections come out fair only because of our always upright election commission and because they are so rigged.
It makes a curious kind of sense -- local politicians in rural areas often pay constituents to vote -- but each constituency (ballot box, rather) is just 1500-odd votes, and hence dwarfed by the size of the country. Also, the worst offenders are usually caught by the election commission, setting examples for the rest.
The other, more dangerous form of rigging elections, is when influential politicians inflate the electoral roll and have people vote multiple times. This happens largely in the metros, because in constituencies with huge electoral rolls and many migrant labourers, fake names are more likely to go unnoticed. The election commission tries to regulate this as much as is possible, but how do you challenge the identity of a man (or woman) who possesses no identification beyond a birth certificate? Especially when you consider migrant labourers who work in big cities, and who often have nothing but names to confirm their identities.
It is to redress this second form of rigging that voter id cards were introduced. As of now they have no other uses beyond identification for voting, and the government has no plans to make them so.
So put it all in perspective, and it makes sense. I am a libertarian by nature, but I understand the bind the election commission is in.
shooting is not too good for my enemies
Any technical info on the PKI implementation in MyKad? Earn some karma
o nIE
I was searching about MyKad's PKI
and found this
http://www.mykeymykad.com.my/
but it redirect my browser (Mozilla) to
https://www.mykeymykad.com.my/error.php?errCode=n
err please complain to ca-support@msctrustgate.com
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
I will try to remove some misunderstanding about the voter's ID card and the voting machine --
1) The cost of Voter's ID card is paid by the govt. Individual voters do not pay anything. I just had to go to a temporary office in my locality to get photographed and pick it up in about 10 minutes. So, the 0.75 USD discrimination problem that you point out is non-existent.
2) The voting machines simply record the number of votes for each candidate, and no record is created about who voted for whom
3) Election commision in India is an independent constitutional body and has been know to re-conduct the elections in voting areas with slightest hint of fraud.
4) Each voting booth in India is allowed to have has one representative from each candidate to ensure that the other candidate does not tryto defraud the voter. This is not perfect but ensures that the fraud when it happens does not skew the result too much.
5) The voting machines contain no OS. The code is in assembly in tamper proof chips, making it very hard to hack
6) The voting machines are not linked together over a network. This implies that to tally votes the machine has to be taken to a central station where again representatives from each candidate ensure that no wholscale fraud takes place.
EVMs are programmed in assembly language, have a serial port to interface to the counting PC, and are very simple devices. Less than 70 machines failed when 11,000 were used last year - and most were fake votes and rigging, not machine failures or bugs.
Tech support normally involves calling up the Area Officer and replacing a new machine. The machine itself costs about $100, IIRC.
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
just some statistics for those who care (from the cia world fact book).
India
Population - 1,045,845,226
Population below poverty line - 25%
Unemployment - 8.8%
Military Expenditure - $12,079.7 million ( 2.5% of gdp)
US
Population - 280,562,489
Population below poverty line - 13%
Unemployment - 5%
Military Expenditure - $276.7 billion ( 3.2% of gdp)
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It was extremely common for polling booths to be attacked by goons paid by one of the candidates and all the ballot papers destroyed.
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Large numbers of "party members" would vote repeatedly by pretending to be someone else or using special techniques that would remove the ink from their fingers.
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Earlier, results for each voting center would be individually known. This would lead to goons beating up people of those villages that voted against them. AFAIK this doesn't happen in the current system because the EVMs are centrally processed and only constituency-wise results are known.
To summarize, the old system was a nightmare both in terms of fairness and in terms of cost because of the huge population. In comparison, the EVMs in the last elections were a panacea. I'm sure its going to be better this time.Don't be a luddite. ID cards aren't infringing on anyone's freedom. It sounds especially ridiculous considering that in India we have a long way to go to achieve basic freedoms, like the right of a female to live. Voter ID cards and EVMs are the best thing to happen to India's political system in a long time.
in a country where the Rs. 30 can buy a gourmet meal for 5 (well, I'm exagerating, but please try to see my point), it strikes me as quite a price for a vote
I don't think the voter is required to pay for the card. The cost is Rs. 30 to the government. But even if we assume that the voter has to pay:
One only has to get a voter ID card once in a lifetime, not for each election. So the cost gets amortized.
Besides, if someone values their vote at less than a meal or two (not 5, your pulling that out of your ass), then they're probably voting because someone paid them Rs 10 to do so. If there's a slight cost to vote, then it will ensure that anyone who votes will have some motivation to vote and a reason for choosing one candidate over the other. That way I'd say its a good thing.
Third, the scheme has just been introduced; I'm sure the price will go down in the future.
Fourth, consider the total cost savings for the country in throwing away ballot papers; it will probably work out to more than Rs 30. per voter.
It's a sad day in India when these 800,000 machines (which will hardly service 1,000,000,000 people) are spread through India.
1e9 people, but only 3e8 are voters, and less than half of them actually turn up. So were talking about 200 people per machine. I don't see the problem. And no, it won't be a sad day, it'll be a day to celebrate.
Conducting an election for 1 billion people is no easy task,
the various costs that the government will incurr on a traditional paper based voting system
i) Printing of the ballot paper (paper on which the vote is marked), this takes about 60-70 % of the cost of election thats coz because the crieteria for being a candidate are
a) the person must be above 24
b) the deposit was earlier INR 1000 to 2000 odd thats about $25 - $50 max.
then the no of candiates used to be around 50, in some places it had touched 100, think of printing a paper with 100 candiates name on it and a few million copies of it, u get the point....
ii) logistics of movement of ballot boxes and personell and the security along with it and personnel payements about 20 - 25 %
iii) misc 5% like the security ink, etc
the initial cost of acquring electronic voting machines are a bit high, but since the same machines can be used for all public elections, the long term benifits are cumulative and it is clearly visible
the electronic voting machines help in reducing the money spent on ballot paper by a minimum of 50% which can be used for other development purposes
this system was tested in earlier elections and everyone is satisfied with this system as this reduces the number of double voting (like the stamp is put for two or more candidates) an other voting anomilies.....
Ok, "AFAUK" seems to be... well, not that far, after all :) Let me remind you there is a WORLD outside USA. There are sovereign countries out there. Things actually happen out there. So, when you say things like "no city/state/province has run an all-electronic election, let alone an entire country" just try to be sure to specify you are talking about your world, i.e., USA.
I don't have a sig.