Voting for Telangana Assembly elections is to be held on 30 November. Earlier, voting has taken place in Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. The key to the fate of candidates of four states has been captured in EVMs, while voters of one state will use EVMs to cast their votes. The Election Commission of India (ECI) will announce the election results on 3 December. In India, the electoral process is completed only through EVM. However, many people also have a suspicion about it being hacked.
In 1982, the Election Commission of India used EVM for the first time in elections. Now EVM is used instead of ballot paper. The full name of EVM is Electronic Voting Machine. It helps in keeping the electoral process fast and clean. Let’s see what EVM’s technology How does it work?
How does EVM machine work?
EVM is used for voting. With this, not only voting takes place, but votes also get stored. On the day of counting, the Election Commission counts the votes cast in the EVM machines. The candidate who gets the most votes is declared the winner.
EVM has two units – control unit and balloting unit. Both these units are connected by a five meter cable.
Control Unit(CU): The control unit is with the presiding officer i.e. Returning Officer (RO).
Balloting Unit (BU): The balloting unit is kept in the voting compartment. People come to this place to cast their votes.
The presiding officer verifies the identity of the voter, and then presses the ballot button of the control unit. After this, the voter can vote by pressing the blue button in front of the candidate and his election symbol present on the balloting unit.
VVPAT with EVM
Now Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) has also started coming along with EVM. A slip comes out of it in which the photograph and election symbol of the candidate for whom the vote has been cast is visible. This lets you know that the vote has been cast at the right place.
Can EVM be hacked?
According to the Election Commission, EVM machines are not controlled by computers. These are stand alone machines which are not connected to the Internet or any other network. Therefore they are completely safe from hacking.
Apart from this, EVM does not have a frequency receiver or decoder for data. Therefore, it is not possible to tamper with it through any wireless device, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth device.
After voting, the Election Commission keeps the EVM under tight security. These are sealed and opened only on the day of counting. In 2017, the Supreme Court also considered EVMs reliable for elections.
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