Pakistan needs 190,387 EVMs for 115.7m voters

LAHORE: If one studies the case of neighbouring India, where almost 912 million registered voters (911,950,734 to be precise) had exercised their right of franchise through 1.5 million Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during their April-May 2019 polls, Pakistan’s 115.75 million (115,748,753) voters would need 1,90,387 EVMs to cater to their needs in the future ballot exercises.

In India’s case, each EVM had thus accommodated 608 voters during their last elections. So, if EVMs are to be procured for the same number of Pakistani voters (608) per machine, the government would have to buy 1,90,387 of these units, if it wishes to use these machines on a full scale countrywide in future. It goes without saying that not everybody casts vote; the voter turnout was 67.40% in India during the 2019 polls and it was 51.7% during the 2018 Pakistani elections. So, number of machines can be reduced to about 95,000 safely.

Meanwhile, India had spent Indian Rs54 billion, currently equivalent to more than Rs126 billion Pakistani rupees, on the procurement of EVMs and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit trail (VVPAT) units. (Reference: July 7, 2019 edition of the Times of India).

According to an Indian media house “Economic Times”, EVMs were commissioned in 1989 by Election Commission of India in collaboration with Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL). The media outlet writes: “EVMs were first used in 1982 in a Kerala State by-election. Thereafter, they were first used on an experimental basis in selected constituencies of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. Later, EVMs were used first time in the general election (entire state) to the assembly of Goa in 1999. And in 2003, all by-elections and state elections were held using EVMs, encouraged by this, the ECI decided to use only EVMs for Lok Sabha election in 2004”.

Capacity of EVMs in India: Research shows that in India, an EVM can record a maximum of 3,840 votes and can cater to a maximum of 64 candidates. There is provision for 16 candidates in a single balloting unit and up to a maximum of 4 units can be connected in parallel. The conventional ballot paper/box method of polling is used if the number of candidates exceeds 64.

According to the Election Commission of India, till date, some 107 elections to states and three parliamentary polls have been smoothly conducted using the EVMs. In the 2014 elections to the Parliament, a million units of these special electronic devices that are really foolproof machines were used and all hailed the verdict as being fair. The number of EVMs crossed 1.5 million in 2019, according to the January 25, 2019 edition of the “BBC News”. According to “BBC”, the EVMs have so far been used in three federal and 113 state elections in India.

It writes: “They save time; results from machines in a single parliamentary seat are available within three to five hours, down from 40 hours when ballots were counted manually. The machines have also eliminated “invalid” votes and led to huge cost saving.

Some 33 countries use some form of electronic voting. The integrity of the machines has been questioned in some of them”.

The “Economic Times” asserts: “Some countries that have dabbled with electronic voting include Brazil, Norway, Germany, Venezuela, India, Canada, Belgium, Romania, Australia, the UK, Italy, Ireland, European Union and France. Uniquely, the Indian voting machine is not networked or linked to the Internet and is considered one of the finest innovations in modern India. Hacking is much easier if machines are networked. The machines are so robust that unless the chips themselves get destroyed the data can be recovered even if the batteries die out or even if the power is accidentally cut off. Another feature called a voter verifiable paper audit trail is slowly being added to machines to make the process even more transparent”. However, in May 2019, BJP President Amit Shah had hit back at Indian opposition parties that had raised doubts over the reliability of EVMs.

Various Indian opposition parties, including Congress, had alleged EVMs were susceptible to tampering, noting that they had won power in states using the same system they say they have so little faith in now. And then, there were reports that people had uprooted EVMs in some Indian towns and had vanished with the units.

(Reference: The May 23, 2019 edition of the Hindustan Times)