Voting Machines Allocate Additional Votes to Ruling Party in Mock Elections

Four of 190 VVPAT Units Produced Inaccurate Outcomes in Kerala

Newsreel Asia Insight #195
April 18, 2024

Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines in Kerala’s Kasaragod district recorded additional votes for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during a mock election held on April 17, two days before the start of the Lok Sabha elections, according to media reports. The event occurred despite a recent Supreme Court affirmation that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) produce accurate outcomes barring improper human handling.

At least four out of 190 VVPAT units attached to EVMs dispensed an extra paper slip bearing the BJP’s lotus symbol during the initial test round, the media outlet Onmanorama reported. The anomaly persisted across three rounds of testing despite efforts to correct it, raising significant concerns among opposition party agents. Specifically, during the first round of mock polls, wherein each candidate should receive one vote on each machine, an additional, unaccounted-for slip for the BJP surfaced, causing uproar among observers.

The error was first noted in machines stored at Kasaragod government college. Advocate B.M. Jamal, chief election agent for Congress candidate Rajmohan Unnithan, noted that while initialising the machines, three specific VVPATs produced “test prints” with the BJP symbol, marked with “not to be counted” in a conspicuously small font, The News Minute noted. Concerns were raised about the potential for these slips to be mistakenly counted in real elections.

Nasar Cherkalam, another agent for Unnithan, was quoted as saying that the erroneous slips had a peculiar size. He questioned the likelihood of such errors occurring in actual voting scenarios. He feared that in the event of a system failure requiring VVPAT counts, these slips could be contested as legitimate votes.

In response to the discrepancies, both Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) filed complaints with the district authorities, urging immediate intervention. The local election officers, however, admitted to a lack of technical expertise necessary to diagnose and rectify the issue promptly, attributing the mishap to possible technical malfunctions.

The machines in question are products of two major public-sector undertakings: Bharat Electronic Limited and the Electronic Corporation of India Limited, which fall under the auspices of the Defence Ministry and the Department of Atomic Energy, respectively. Despite the significance of the mock poll, no engineers from these organisations were present to oversee the process.

Earlier in April, the Supreme Court issued a notice to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on a petition demanding a comprehensive count of VVPAT slips in elections, challenging the current practice of verifying only a subset of EVMs in each assembly segment.

When a voter presses a button on the EVM for the candidate of their choice, the VVPAT generates a paper slip, which contains the name, serial number and symbol of the candidate chosen by the voter. It’s displayed behind a transparent window for the voter to see. The voter cannot take the paper slip with them. It serves only as a verification tool for the voter to ensure their vote has been accurately recorded by the EVM. After the voter has viewed the slip, it automatically falls into a sealed container attached to the VVPAT machine. This container can only be opened during the vote counting process. In case of a dispute or for random verification, these paper slips can be counted to check against the electronic tally of the EVM.

VVPAT audits are currently mandatory in only five randomly selected polling stations per assembly or parliamentary constituency.

The Supreme Court’s engagement with the issue followed a history of legal scrutiny over VVPAT and EVM verification methods. Prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, opposition parties had petitioned the Court for increased VVPAT verification, leading to a directive that raised the number of EVMs tallied with VVPAT from one to five per assembly segment.

The demand for 100% VVPAT verification has been met with resistance, citing practical difficulties and the potential for procedural delays.

Meanwhile, as the mock polling in Kerala concluded, district election officials compiled a detailed report acknowledging the technical glitches, which was subsequently submitted to higher authorities for further action. The district collector, acting as the District Election Officer, pledged to scrutinise the issues closely.