The Supreme Court will render a decision on a group of petitions that seek 100% verification of the votes cast in electronic voting machines (EVMs) using Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trial (VVPAT) slips today, following the ongoing second round of voting.
A VVPAT Machine: What Is It? How Does It Function?
By printing a slip of paper with the voter’s selection on it, the VVPAT machine—which is affixed to the ballot unit of the EVM—provides visual confirmation for the vote made by a voter. The voter has seven seconds to confirm her vote on this piece of paper that has the candidate’s name, party emblem, and serial number shown in the machine behind a glass pane. The slide then drops into an opening underneath.
The VVPAT slip is used to validate votes cast in five randomly chosen polling places, so no voter may take it home. The theory behind this is that voters and political parties will have more confidence in the process and know that their vote is being accurately recorded if they can physically confirm the electronically cast ballot.
Why Were VVPATs Introduced By The Election Commission?
The Election Commission of India (EC) met with political parties in 2010 to examine ways to improve the transparency of the EVM-based voting process, which gave rise to the concept of the VVPAT machine.
Field tests were conducted in July 2011 in Ladakh, Thiruvananthapuram, Cherrapunjee, East Delhi, and Jaisalmer following the development of a prototype. An EC expert committee accepted the design in February 2013 after it was adjusted, tested further, and political parties’ input was gathered.
The Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 were modified later that year to permit the attachment of a printer with a drop box to the electronic voting machine. After the VVPAT was first implemented in all 21 voting places inside the Nagaland constituency of the Noksen Assembly in 2013, the Election Commission (EC) intended to roll out the technology gradually. In June 2017, VVPAT adoption reached 100%.
Why Are The VVPAT Slips From Just Five Polling Places Counted At Random?
In 2018, the EC mentioned in an affidavit is filed in the Supreme Court, that it asked the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) to come up with a “mathematically sound, statistically robust and practically cogent sample size for the internal audit of the VVPAT slips with electronic result of EVMs” in order to determine what percentage of slips from VVPAT machines need to be counted in order to verify the accuracy of an election.
The EC ordered in February 2018 that one randomly chosen polling place per Assembly constituency have its VVPAT slips counted. Following a Supreme Court ruling in April 2019 on a petition brought by TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu, this was expanded to five polling places per Assembly seat. The Returning Officer in question selects the five polling places by drawing lots in front of the candidates and their representatives.
Why Is The EC Against Counting Fifty Percent Of VVPAT Slips?
Election officials in a single polling station require around an hour to reconcile VVPAT slips with the EVM count, according to an earlier submission made by the EC to the SC. Furthermore, five polling stations would have a five-hour wait overall as the counting of VVPAT slips cannot start until the EVM votes for the relevant polling station have been calculated, according to EC sources.
The EC has also called attention to infrastructure issues that impede the expansion of polling booths where VVPAT slips are counted, including the shortage of labor.
Why Are Political Parties Calling For Expanded VVPAT Slip Verification?
To increase voting transparency, opposition parties are demanding that more polling places be verified. They contend that the importance of a fair election is too great to be outweighed by worries about results announcement delays.
Parties have demanded that VVPAT slips be verified to varying degrees—from 50% to 100%. A resolution requiring 100% verification of VVPAT slips was voted in December by the Opposition INDIA alliance, which is made up of the Congress, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Trinamool Congress, the DMK, and the Samajwadi Party.
What Is Happening Today?
Today, the Supreme Court will rule on petitions requesting a 100% match between the votes cast on EVMs and VVPATs. The order will be passed by a bench consisting of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta.
Notably, following two days of hearings, the Court had previously set aside April 18 for the ruling on the petitions. Nonetheless, it had once more scheduled a debate of the issue for April 24 in order to comprehend how the EVMs and ECI function.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the bench asked questions about specific technical issues related to how EVMs operate, such as whether or not the microcontrollers that are installed in them can be reprogrammed.
Following the court’s listing of the questions, the ECI requested comprehensive explanations. Regarding the security feature, the ECI said that it was not practically possible to count all of the VVPAT slips and that the EVMs cannot be tampered with under any circumstances.
