This is concerning the SC decision reported by Prashant Bhushan jee on X:
Prashant Bhushan@pbhushan1
Since EVMs & VVPATS have programmable chips in which a malicious program can be loaded to manipulate votes, & since Voters have deep distrust of EVMs, we had asked the SC to either: Go back to paper ballots, or; Give VVPAT slip to the voter to put in a ballot box & then count VVPAT slips; or keep the light on in the VVPAT machine & count all the slips. Today only 2% VVPAT slips are matched with EVM. SC today rejected our demands & has instead given 3 directions: 1 That ECI should examine feasibility of having a bar code on VVPATS & then mechanically counting all slips; 2. The symbol loading unit should be sealed & kept available for 45 days after elections; 3. That the losing candidates can seek examination of the ‘burnt memory’ of any 5 EVMs at their cost.
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One of the directions given by the Supreme Court states: “That the losing candidates can seek examination of the ‘burnt memory’ of any 5 EVMs at their cost.”
In light of a statement given by an official of the ECI: “The program itself is frozen. It cannot be read. It cannot be entered. Even the BEL and ECL cannot read that …”, (per video on the website: https://indiaevm.org/,) what is the point in the permission given to the candidates to seek examination of the ‘burnt memory’ of any 5 EVMs at their cost? No one, not even BEL and ECL can read what is written on the chips.
The suggestion “That ECI should examine the feasibility of having a bar code on VVPATS & then mechanically counting all slips;” is a wise decision for future consideration. However, when so much is at stake, when changing the whole constitution is being talked about, why can’t all of the VVPAT slips be counted? And why shouldn’t the tinted black glass on VVPAT be replaced by clear glasses for the remaining part of the election process?
As for, “The symbol loading unit should be sealed & kept available for 45 days after elections;” some people suspect vulnerability to exist in the symbol loading unit. But that does not mean that there are no other ways of manipulating the vote counts. One such way has been narrated below. There must be dozens of other ways of manipulating the EVMs.
I believe the honorable court’s decision is ill-informed, and against the interest of an electoral democracy founded on voting, with an assurance to the voters that their votes will be counted accurately, not only in fact but even in appearance. We hear of falling vote percentages. We wonder if that could be due to voters’ belief that EVMs are rigged. We must devise simple transparent ways that give faith in the hearts and minds of voters that their votes are being counted accurately without the possibility of rigging.
The EVMs can be manipulated
The above-mentioned video was made in 2010, before VVPAT was ordered by the Supreme Court of India. Today VVPATs have been manufactured at the cost of thousands of lakhs of rupees. Even ECI posits more faith in the veracity of VVPAT counts as compared to the electronic counts on the control Units of EVMs. They clearly state: “Rule 56D(4)(b) of the Conduct of Election (Amendment) Rules, 2013 provides for the primacy of the VVPAT slip count over the electronic tally of ballots cast and calculated on the EVMs.” Yet the ECI insists that to save time we must rely on the electronic tally and count only a small sample of the VVPAT slips for verification purposes. And the Supreme Court agrees with the ECI. It does not make sense to me, nor to the common man & woman.
The first phase of the election was conducted on the 19th of April, 2024. The seventh and last phase has been scheduled for the 1st of June. Counting is to begin on the 4th of June. The heaven is not going to fall apart if the counting of VVPAT were to continue for a few days, and the result is delayed beyond June 4th, 2024.
Please watch the video (6:37 minutes) at https://indiaevm.org/. Listen to the election commission official at 4:10 past the beginning. He unambiguously states: “The program itself is frozen. It cannot be read. It cannot be entered. Even the BEL and ECL cannot read that …”
Once something is etched into a chip, it cannot be “read”. It can be given some input, and the program in the chip can process the same and give an output. However, no one can get a clue of what the program is on the chip. So, what is the point in letting a candidate ask the ECI to have its experts examine the EVMs and VVPATs, the same ECI, which has been swearing by the authenticity of its EVMs from the rooftops, ever since it started manufacturing the same?
The program on the chips can be made to do all that has been demonstrated possible with hardware replacements by the team composed of experts from India, the US and Netherland. The program/software can work in a normal mode expected from a truthful EVM, as well as it can be made to do special tricks with the help of secret codes transmitted to it electronically via Bluetooth, WiFi, or carrier signals that transmit our voice from one phone to another. The antenna can be hidden in the chip.
Ordinarily, the program may be made to work in a simple normal mode. In this mode, it will be designed to work just as it is supposed to. It will store votes cast for different candidates in their respective bins, and display the same, accurately, whenever asked. But it may be designed to be watching for secret codes and do special things per the secret code received by the EVM.
In one mode, the chip can broadcast, the final vote count for all candidates at the close of voting via secret codes, including a serial number of the machine and its GPS-monitored geo-location. So, the rogue technicians managing the chips secretly would get a good picture of the election result, and in which machines the vote counts need to be manipulated for the chosen candidate to win.
On the day of counting, they would wait until the verification of the EVMs randomly selected EVMs is over. I.e., until the matching of electronic count on some random EVMs against the VVPAT slip-count has been done and finished.
After the verification process is over, the rogue technicians would start broadcasting secret codes that can instruct specific machines to transfer a specific number of votes from one or more candidates to the chosen one, enabling the chosen one from the chosen constituency to win. They would not have to manipulate all of the machines.
The program can also be so written that it can restore the original electronic counts on the machines after the candidates’ votes have been read. This way, the machines can again pass post-election verification of randomly selected machines, if so challenged. The only way to catch such vote manipulation would be to count all of the votes, not just randomly selected ones.
If a program like the one described above is etched into a chip controlling an EVM, there can be no way of catching any vote manipulation, or its capability to do so on receiving secret electronic codes. The secret code that enables the machine to manipulate vote counts in them would be almost impossible to detect and proving that the machine contains a manipulable program would be futile.
How can such a program go into the machine? All that a suitable entity has to do is to pore a sufficiently large sum of money into the coffers of the company responsible to the etch the programs sent by ECL & BEL to a chip etching company in Japan, USA, Israel, or wherever, and have the company design a program to do special tricks described above and print the same on the chips to be sent back to India. Would that be a difficult task for Modi jee, or Adani or Ambani?
Mind you, “The program itself is frozen. It cannot be read. It cannot be entered. Even the BEL and ECL cannot read that,” as rightly stated by an ECI official. As such, the entity with a sufficiently large sum of money, which can to get the specially designed chips put in all its EVMs, can control the outcome of any elections in India, wherever such EVMs are used. We must cease using such machines.
VVPATs can be suitably modified to be user-friendly, secure, and reliable for future elections, without any need for concurrent use of EVMs. We will describe the same in another article.
Dr. Satinath Choudhary is a retired professor of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering
