How can Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) be manipulated ?
- Part 2 -

Dr. Khomdon Singh Lisam *

Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) :: Pix - TSE

4. Which candidate to favour

Once the dishonest display is installed in an EVM (possibly months or years before the election), the attacker must communicate which candidate is to be favoured or disfavoured and by what margin. There are many different ways that attackers could send such a signal- various kinds of radios, secret combinations of key presses, or even by using the number of candidates on the ballot.

2. Stealing of Votes To steal votes, the attacker indicates his favoured candidate using the rotary switch, which selects a number from 0–9, and the attacker can use it to pick a favoured candidate in any of the first 9 ballot positions, which normally include the major national parties. When the switch is set to positions 1-9, the chip on the clip-on device executes a vote-stealing programme .

The programme runs in two passes: first, it reads the list of votes and calculates how many votes to steal from each candidate, and second, it rewrites the list of votes, stealing votes as calculated in the first phase. Any time between the start of polling and the public count, dishonest election insiders or other criminals could use the clip-on device to change the votes recorded in the EVM. In India, counting sometimes takes place weeks after voting, so criminals could wait for an opportunity to tamper with the machines while they are in storage. In normal operation, the EVM limits the rate of voting to no more than 5 per minute.

However, Clip-on device bypasses the software restrictions of the EVM, so an attacker is able to again forcibly take control of an EVM and stuff the electronic "ballot box" with any number of votes. These attacks are neither complicated nor difficult to perform, but they would be hard to detect or defend against.

3. Dishonest insiders or other criminals with physical access to the machines at any time before ballots are counted can insert malicious hardware that can steal votes for the lifetime of the machines. Attackers with physical access between voting and counting can arbitrarily change vote totals and can learn which candidate each voter selected.

4 The EVM has no means for the voter to verify that his/her votes have been tallied properly.

5. The EVM has no means outside of the memories of the voting machines themselves to audit or recount the votes.

6. Susceptibility to fraud: Although some may believe that tampering with an electronic voting machine is extremely hard to do, computer scientists have tampered with machines to prove that it is quite easily done. If people have access to the machines, and know how to work them, they can take the memory card out of the machine, which stores the votes, and in place they put their own memory card with a virus that can tamper with the votes

7. Government ties of manufacturers: The Government at the time of election may hire any manufacturer or company for manufacturing EVMs according to the needs of the political party in power An EVM can be tampered during manufacturing stage, that too during the manufacturing of the Chip. After tampering the EVM, its difficult to detect it by a third party. When the tampering happens at the manufacturing stage of chip, even those who are assembling the EVMs will not be aware of and cannot detect tampering .

8. Malicious software programming: Any computer software is basically generated from software programming and coding. And all these soft wares could be tampered with by a computer programmer who knows the source code. Testing electronic voting systems for security problems, especially if they were intentionally introduced and concealed, is basically impossible. If malicious coding is inserted by programmers into commercial software that are triggered by obscure combinations of commands and keystrokes via the computer keyboard, then election results can change completely.

9. Physical security of machines:

10. Secure storage of cast votes: The votes that are cast using the electronic voting machines, are stored in a safe storage or space in the computer machine memory. The time gap between election and the counting of votes is a risk to possible hacking and manipulation . The chance of tampering increases as the time gap increases.

Why do other countries rejected EVMs ?

Several countries in the world rejected Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) because they are difficult to secure, easily subject to manipulation and open to large scale fraud and pose a serious threat for free, fair and transparent elections in democratic societies. EVMs are allowed in most states of the US only with a paper back up. Indian EVMs do not produce a paper trail, which is a major drawback . Potential dangers of "vote fraud" and more importantly, lack of transparency and verifiability associated with them prompted ban or restrictions of their use. Developed nations like the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Singapore have so far stuck to voting on paper ballots, owing to their simplicity, verifiability and voter confidence in the system.

Some of the countries ho have rejected EVMs are as follows :-

1. Ireland abandoned e-voting in 2006.

2. Italian Minister Giulano Amato stated, "We decided to stop the electronic voting machine. During the 2006 elections we experimented with the machines as a voting system, and not a system that counts the sections, without any reference to the legally valid votes. "Let's stick to voting and counting physically because less easy to falsify." ( Source of info: http://www.jasonkitcat.com/h/f/JDOM/blog/1/?be_id=320)

3. California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned EVMs in the November 2004 elections as certain security conditions were not met with. Verifiable paper trail & certain security conditions need to be implemented. People want elections results that can be physically verified. (http://www.wvcag.org/news/fair_use/2004/07_01e.htm)

4. Germany's Supreme Court ruled in March 2009 that e-voting was unconstitutional.

5. In the Netherlands, in 2006, licenses of 1,187 EVMs were withdrawn after citizen group 'We do not trust voting machines' showed they could hack into EVMs in 5 minutes from up to 40 metres without the knowledge of voters or election officials. The nation will return to paper voting." (Publication: ComputerWorld, Dt: 19-05-2008, Author: Andreas Udo de Haes)

6. Supreme Court of Finland declared the result of pilot electronic voting machines invalid in the municipal corporation elections of 2009. After Hugo Chávez won the 2004 election in Venezuela, it came out that the government owned 28 percent of Bizta, the company that manufactured the voting machines. The CIA has reported vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about EVMs & tampering. Stigall who studied electronic systems in about 36 countries said that most countries' machines produced paper receipts that voters then dropped into boxes. However, even that doesn\'t prevent corruption. (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/64711.html)

Should India also ban EVMs?

Speed of election results is obviously an attraction for the EVMs. But saving democracy is more critical than saving election costs or gain in efficiency. Numerous EVM rigging allegations have been made by many prominent personalities.

* "EVMs were manipulated during the poll which resulted in defeat of many Congress candidates," IANS quoted Congress general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad as saying soon after his party's defeat in Orissa in July 2009.

* LK Advani has demanded a paper back-up to electronic voting. Parties such as CPM, TDP, AIADMK, RJD, LJP and Trinamool Congress have joined the chorus.

* In 2001, Capt. Amarinder Singh, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee alleged that EVMs can be tampered with.( ttp://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20010312/main4.htm

* In 2009, Chandrababu Naidu blamed the EVMs for his defeat. ( http://www.deccanchronicle.com/hyderabad/now,-naidu-blames-evms-720

* In 2009, AIADMK urged the EC to revert back to paper ballots, saying that EVMs were rigged in Lok Sabha polls (http://www.thehindu.com/2009/05/28/stories/2009052850110100.htm)

* When the Indian National Congress surpassed all projections to win 262 seats in 2009, According to Dr. Subramanian Swamy, President of the Janata Party (24-8-2010) , the Leader of Indian National Congress Mrs. Sonia Gandhi reportedly hired hackers to hack into election results of the electronic voting machines, which resulted in landslide victory of the Indian National Congress in the national elections in 2009. (Electronic Voting Machine: Excellent tool of manipulation- by News Desk, December 17, 2011-http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1993/electronic-voting-machine-excellent-tool)

* In 2004, the Hon. Kerala High Court has asked EC to consider representation seeking changes in the EVMs. to consider suggestions of Prof. Satinath Choudhary and address issues concerning possible tampering of EVMs ( http://www.thehindu.com/2009/05/27/stories/2009052751030200.htm

* On 1st December, 2010, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh announced that there will be full electronic voting system in Bangladesh to arrange the future elections in a flawless manner. But there are serious allegations that a group of "election planners" of the ruling party has already contacted a number of leading EVM hackers in India, including the most infamous "Cyber Army ". According to unconfirmed sources, the ruling party influential figures from Bangladesh are already bargaining a "package deal" with the Indian hackers in ensuring a massive victory and re-election of Bangladesh Awami League during the election in 2014 in exchange of a huge amount of money.

Initially, the Indian hackers demanded US$ 1 billion for this service; while the figure has already been brought down to US$ 400 million and the ruling party men are optimistic of getting even a cheaper deal with the Indian hackers. Once the deal will be successfully concluded, there will be visibly no way in stopping the ruling party from getting re-elected in the election of 2014. Bangladesh has indigenously developed its own electronic voting machines. Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) has developed these systems. (http://www.indianevm.com/blogs/?cat=3 )

Possible solutions Nine safeguards recommended by International Electrical & Electronics Engineering Journal (May 2009, p 23) should be incorporated.

* EVMs should print a paper record of each vote, to be deposited in a conventional ballot box. This ensures physical evidence and speedy results.

* A Voter Verified Paper Ballot (VVPB) provides an auditable way to assure voters that their ballots will be available to be counted. Without VVPB there is no way to independently audit the election results.

* Use two machines produced by different manufacturers to records votes.

* Expose the software behind EVMs to public scrutiny. Having the software closely examined by independent experts would make it easier to close technical loopholes that hackers can exploit.

* Booth monitoring: Strict monitoring of the activities inside the polling booth is important to eliminate human elements responsible for frauid and corruption .

EVMs may be needed, but this is not the best option for corruption prone environment that exist in India.

Concluded...