Chandragupta's research on EVM reliability

This is an excellent research on reliability of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), which Chandragupta sent me by email. I would like to post it here for the benefit of all. Enjoy!


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chandragupta Acharya
Date: Sun, May 17, 2009 at 8:24 AM
Subject: Food for thought.....
To:

For the second consecutive parliamentary election, the results have defied pre-election predictions. How can political analysts, psephologists, opinion polls, exit polls, independent surveys, internal estimates of political parties (as reported in the media) etc - ALL go wrong? How come the Congress is consistently getting more seats than what is predicted by all of the above? It happened in the 2004 election and again in 2009. I find it curious and wonder if this is the magic of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) .

A short search on the internet threw up the following:
First, a detailed presentation and FAQ from the Election Commission of India on EVM used in the 2009 elections, including its security and integrity aspects:
Election Commission of India
(see 'Presentation' and 'FAQ' link on the bottom right hand corner)

For the recently concluded elctions, EVMs have been supplied by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bangalore and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Hyderabad. About 1.36 million electronic voting machines were used in 828,000 polling booths across the country. An IIT Graduate from Pune has alleged that the EVMs are vulnerable to magnetic fields, but his claim is rejected by ECIL Chairman. See news report:
ECIL claim

BEL tried to export its EVMs to the US. But Americans rejected India's EVMs because they were not convinved the EVMs were tamper proof (This is from July 2004 - after Vajpayee's defeat):
EVMs not to debut in US

In US, the EVMs have been a subject of intense controversy, which is why US has not yet adopted fully to Electronic Voting. Machines can have problems such as counting some votes twice or making errors in adding up. (To be fair, the machines mentioned below are different from the ones used in India)
California Progress Report

Some people claim that the machines can be easily hacked.
Hacking an e voting machine

The first link below has several references to experts who claim EVMs can be tampered with, including a video which shows the machine making a 'mistake':
Independent.co.uk

WebIndia123.com

In fact, the following passage on George Bush's controversial election win in 2004 is worth reproducing here:
"Writing in the New Statesman way back in 2004, reflecting on criticisms of the electronic voting systems used in the presidential election that year, Michael Meacher MP pointed out that statisticians, academics and political analysts had highlighted significant voting differences between electoral districts that used paper ballots and those that used electronic systems. These cannot be explained by random variation. The investigators found a much larger variance than expected and in every case it favoured George W Bush over John Kerry. In Wisconsin and Ohio, the discrepancy favoured Bush by 4 per cent, in Pennsylvania by 5 per cent, in Florida and Minnesota by 7 per cent, in North Carolina by 9 per cent and in New Hampshire by a whopping 15 per cent.

Research by the University of Berkeley, California, revealed election irregularities in 2004 in Florida. These irregularities, all of which were associated with electronic voting machines, appear to have awarded between 130,000 to 260,000 additional votes to Bush.

The discrepancies between paper and electronic voting could be the result of simple technological glitches. But some experts detect something more sinister: outright vote fixing by interference with voting machine and tabulation software".

In fact, George Bush's 2004 election turned controversial precisely because the actual results turned out to be different from what exit polls predicted:
George Bush's 2004 election

Here is an 8-part interview series with Stephen Spoonamore, a US security expert who explains why electronic voting is inherently unsafe:
Stephen Spoonamore on youtube

Or read this book "Black Box Voting" available free on the internet on the website given below, written by two US computer security experts:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

In the US, Voting machine security audits have uncovered serious vulnerabilities:
California voting machine security tests cover serious vulnerabilities

Food for thought.
-Chandragupta