Why do we need VVPAT?
On April 19, the Union Cabinet cleared the purchase of 16,15,000 units of the voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) to work as additions to the electronic voting machine (EVM) set-up after an express request by the Election Commission, following complaints about probable tampering of the voting machines by various political parties. The VVPAT units will be manufactured and used across the board during the next Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
How does it function?
VVPAT, as the term suggests, is an EVM-connected verification printer machine. It allows voters to verify if their vote has indeed gone to the intended candidate by leaving a paper trail of the vote cast.
It is an adjunct machine connected to the ballot and control units of the EVM. After the voter casts his or her mandate by pressing a button in the EVM, the VVPAT connected to it prints a slip containing the poll symbol and the name of the candidate. The slip is visible to the voter from a glass case in the VVPAT for seven seconds.
After this it is cut and dropped into the drop box in the VVPAT, and a beep is heard.
Prior to voting, the VVPAT unit is calibrated to ensure that the button pressed on the ballot unit of the EVM is reflected correctly on the printed slips by the VVPAT. The presence of the slips that correspond to voter choice on the EVM helps retain a paper trail for the votes and makes it possible for the returning officer to corroborate machine readings of the vote if there is a dispute over the mandate in case of a close contest or if the EVM itself has been replaced due to defects before polling.
VVPAT machines can be accessed only by polling officers. The units are sealed and can be opened only during the counting process by the returning officer during contingencies.
Is it necessary?
The Election Commission began to introduce electronic voting machines on an experimental basis for the voting process in 1998, and it was deployed across all State elections post 2001. EVMs have made a significant impact on Indian elections.
Prior to the deployment of EVMs, elections were held with the use of ballot paper. In some States, the election process was vitiated through rigging, and electoral malpractices such as stuffing of the ballot box with ballot paper and preventing voters from voting through intimidation.
Besides this, ballot paper-based voting also resulted in the casting of a high number of invalid votes — voters wrongly registering their choices instead of placing seals, and so on. The deployment of EVMs allowed for an elimination of invalid votes as the voting process was made much easier — registering the vote by pressing a button. It also allowed for a quicker and easier tallying of votes.
Cumulatively, the tallying and elimination of invalid votes reduced the scope for human error in the electoral process.
Secondly, EVMs also made it difficult to commit malpractices such as stuffing of ballot boxes, as they allowed for only five votes to be registered every minute, discouraging mass rigging of the scale that was seen in earlier days when ballot papers were used by the Election Commission.
Will it make polls tamper-proof?
Questions have been raised about the security of the EVM itself and whether it can be manipulated and tampered with. The Election Commission has addressed the possibility of tampering by gradually introducing newer security and monitoring features, upgrading first generation with second generation ones that allow for dynamic coding and time-stamping of operations on ballot units and later, third generation ones that have features such as tamper-detection and self-diagnostics. Besides these, there are procedural steps that prevent EVMs from being stolen and tampered with. The introduction of the VVPAT adds another layer of accountability to the EVM and also allows for verification of the machine-generated mandate through the paper trail.
