Electronic voting machine (E.V.M)

ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE

Author: Ms Swati Rai.

Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) is a simple automated device used to record votes in place of ballot papers and boxes which were used earlier in the conventional voting system. Fundamental right to vote or simply voting in elections expresses the basis of democracy.

All earlier elections be it state elections or centre appointments a voter used to cast his or her favourite applicant by putting the stamp against his or her name and then folding the ballot paper as per a given method before pushing it in the Ballot Box.

This is a long, time-consuming method and very much prone to errors. This situation was continued till elections and the scene was wholly changed by the electronic voting machine.

No more ballot paper, ballot boxes, stamping, etc. all this summarized into a simple box called ballot unit of the computerized voting machine. Because biometric identifiers cannot be easily inappropriate, forged, or shared, they are measured more reliable for person recognition than an outdated token or knowledge-based methods.

So, the Electronic voting system has to be amended based on the current technologies viz., biometric system.  This article deliberates complete review about voting devices, Issues and assessment among the voting methods and biometric EVM.

Elections allow the general public to choose their representatives and express their likings for how they will be administered.

Naturally, the integrity of the election process is fundamental to the integrity of the democracy itself.  The election system must be sufficiently robust to withstand a variety of deceitful behaviours and must be sufficiently transparent and logical that voters and candidates can accept the results of an election.

Electronic voting:  It is also known as e-voting is a term encircling several different types of voting, embracing both electronic means of casting a vote and computerized means of counting votes.

Electronic voting technology can also include punched cards, optical scan voting systems and specialized voting consist off self-contained direct-recording electronic voting systems or DRE. It can also involve communication of ballots and votes via telephones, private computer networks, or the Internet. And, of course, EVM helps maintain total voting privacy without the use of ballot papers.  And, at the end of the voting, just press a button and there you have the results.

India’s experience in e-voting:  India is the world’s largest democracy with an inhabitant of more than one billion. India has constituency of more than 668 million and covers 543 parliamentary constituencies.

The electronic voting machines are intended both to reduce the errors and to speed up the counting process. The country developed its electronic voting machines (EVM) through an original technology. It was planned by Bharat Electronics Ltd, and the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, with the microchip imported from Japan. The country back then developed over one million EVM s for its 668 million voters. Hence it cost them a great deal of money.

ISSUES OF EVM

Around the world, electoral officials are examining various skills to address a wide-ranging array of voting issues like:

• System adaptability and acceptability by all shareholders including common people residing in remote communities, probably some of them illiterate too.
• System functionality as close to conventional ballot paper system as probable. Cost-effectiveness and ease of deployment and maintenance of the system.
• System reliability and security in terms of fiddle resistance, errors free operation etc., Speed and efficiency of voting and results declaration. Accessibility One of the largest issues related to DRE voting systems is approachability.

• For designers of computer programs, convenience is the easiest design factor to ignore. Many classes of voters can easily be disqualified by a voting system that accommodates only “normal” users.  The most obvious of these is spiked voters.

• The federal Voting Approachability for the Elderly and Handicapped Act (VAEHA), passed in1984, mandates that polling places be available and serviceable by the elderly and handicapped. According to the National Organization on Disability, DREsurveyingsystems are the most reachable technology, compared to the lever, punch-card, optical scan, and hand count systems.

• Bias Aside from approachability, the issue of bias presents both a logistical and a legal problem for elections. Actual ballot design is fairly quarrelsome, in part, because candidates believe that their location on the ballot changes the opportunity that a voter will select them. For example, candidates listed initially on a ballot are largely favoured.

For this reason, many jurisdictions pre-select a nominated balloting order; often, contenders are listed by the party in a specified information, by lottery, or alphabetically.  Electronic ballots cannot avoid these drawbacks for the same reason that paper ballots cannot; names on a ballot must be presented in some fashion.

Accountability and Verifiability Traditionally, votes were cast on paper and were counted by hand. Voters were poised that the marks they made on ballots reflected their intended vote.

Voting machines that used levers and punch card systems also provided the voters with a high degree of confidence that they cast their votes as planned.

Solutions

Since the EVM Design is suitable for the electoral system of any country, it needs minor modifications.

• The verification has to be extended into the second level, the first level with VOTER ID either by using thumb impression or by iris technology so that one can avoid polling agents and casting vote by unauthorized voters.

• When the current EVM technology is transformed with networking capabilities, one can vote from anywhere in the world from any internet centre provided with thumb impression or Iris device on the same day. Those network of Biometric EVM has to be technologically advanced for security as well as to get the desired result as fast as possible when the election gets over so that we get the results at the Election day itself.
• The EVM software developed with few minor modifications will favour the conduct of elections for both assembly and the parliament simultaneously and it can also use for local body elections.