India Elections 2014 Uses Big Data,, EVMs On Cloud Computing Platform

We are in the last leg of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and on May 16 the counting would begin.  For many this would be a new experience. These first time young voters must have surely heard of the Electronic Voting Machines or EVMs at the voting booths, but having not seen it before, we tell you how they work.

The machine essentially includes a control unit and a balloting unit, both connected via a five meter cable. These machines can be powered by a six volt alkaline battery, which means they can easily be used in rural areas where there is no electricity.

A voter has to simply press a button on the side of a candidate’s party image to cast his or her vote. A machine can only accept five votes in a minute, and after each vote, the machine locks itself and can only be unlocked using a new ballot number. The polling booth is always presided by a government officer in charge of the controlling unit of the EVM. The officer is the one in charge of unlocking the machine to accept another ballot. This system is tamper-proof and a person won’t be able to cast more than one vote.

One machine is able to accept up to 3,840 votes, and cater to 16 candidates each. So with four EVMs at a polling booth, these machines can cater to 64 candidates in one constituency. If there is a constituency, where there are more than 64 candidates, the polling booth has to fall back on the traditional paper ballots.

An EVM has more than one advantage over paper ballots. It is tamper-proof, illiterate people find it easier to press a button than putting a stamp on a paper and finally the vote counting takes only two to three hours as compared to 30-40 hours using the traditional method.

Are EVMs still a Big Concern?

One of the issues of concern to the voter is the performance and credibility of the electronic voting machines (EVM) used for registering the votes.

In India, the EVMs are designed and developed under the close coordination of the EC.  The two major Government of India enterprises i.e., Bharat Electronic Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) are the two prestigious institutions are responsible for improvement and also the production of the EVM’s.

On one side, our EVM’s are showing excellent performance because of which countries like Namibia are interested to use EVMs manufactured in India.

The other side of the EVM performance is not encouraging.  The operation is having lot of disturbances as detailed below.

• The EVM’s get stuck up.  The voters standing in the queue would be finding it difficult and they pressurize the staff on polling duty for rectification of the EVMs.  Many incidents have been reported where due to malfunctioning of EVM’s the polling did not start as per the schedule.  Though there are sufficient number of spare EVM’s provided by the EC, the same may not come handy and in time in case of EVM’s getting stuck up.

• The other major criticism on EVM’s is that the machines are transferring the votes not as per actual.  For ex. In some cases, the votes are polled to candidate of one particular party though the voters cast their vote to different candidate.  The demo of EVM conducted by the EC in Assam to the political parties proved this point well.  The EC tried to give explanation but it could not satisfy the political parties on the perfect and impartial functioning of the EVMs.  Kerala branch of Aam Aadmi Party reported this kind of malfunctioning in the present elections.

Despite the ease of operation and ease of counting of votes, the problems posed by the EVM’s need to be rectified and the performance of the machines to be ensured so that the voter and political parties get confidence about the perfect and impartial performance of the EVMs.