New Delhi: Citing US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard’s statement about evidence that electronic voting systems are vulnerable to hacking in her country, the Congress on Saturday demanded that the government and the Election Commission come clean on the EVM issue and urged the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance of the matter.
“It is time that the Election Commission should take accountability for the doubts raised when many states are about to go to the polls,” Congress general secretary Randeep Surjewala said at a press conference.
The Congress and several other oppositions have been questioning the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMs), and their leaders have been demanding a return to the ballot papers.
But the Election Commission of India denies this. It says, “Some countries use Electronic Voting Systems which are a mix of multiple systems, machines and processes including various private networks including Internet etc. India uses Electronic Voting Machines which work like simple, correct and accurate calculators and cannot be connected to either internet, WiFi or infrared,” the Election Commission sources said.
The poll body officials emphasised that these machines have stood legal scrutiny by the Supreme Court and are invariably checked by political parties at various stages, including the conduct of mock polls before polling starts.
“More than five crore VVPAT slips have been verified and matched while counting in front of contesting candidates,” the officials said, stressing the authenticity of the devices.
This follows the United States Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard saying that her office has obtained “evidence of vulnerabilities” in electronic voting systems “that allow hackers to flip votes”. It must be noted that Gabbard was talking about the concept of electronic voting in general and did not highlight a particular kind of system.
On Thursday, while addressing the media, Tulsi Gabbard said that he department has found “evidence of how these electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time and vulnerable to exploitation to manipulate the results of the votes being cast”.
Gabbar argued that the findings necessitate the nationwide use of paper ballots in the United States to restore and uphold public confidence in the integrity of US elections.
“We have evidence of how these electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time and vulnerable to exploitation to manipulate the results of the votes being cast, which further drives forward your mandate to bring about paper ballots across the country so that voters can have faith in the integrity of our elections”, she said while speaking to reporters.
