Former India minister runs 'a tutorial' for Elon Musk on EVMs

In a recent exchange on social media platform X, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sparked controversy by vouching for the elimination of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), over the risk of ‘hacking’.

Former Minister of State of IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar countered his statement saying that India’s EVMs are robustly secure, in fact very different from those used in other countries.

Chandrasekhar countered Musk’s statement with a detailed explanation of India’s approach to EVM technology.

He said that Indian EVMs are custom-designed with stringent security measures. They operate in an isolated environment without any connectivity to external networks or media, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or the internet.

This isolation ensures that the voting machines cannot be accessed remotely or reprogrammed, as they are equipped with factory-programmed controllers.

“Elon Musk’s statement is a sweeping generalization that does not apply to India,” Chandrasekhar wrote in X. He went on to invite Musk in order to explore and understand the architecture of Indian EVMs, and how its design is specially tailored to meet the specific security needs of the electoral process of India.

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This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. @elonmusk 's view may apply to US n other places - where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet connected Voting machines.

But Indian EVMs are custom… https://t.co/GiaCqU1n7O

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@RajeevRC_X) June 16, 2024

In his reply to Chandrashekhar, Musk again wrote “anything can be hacked,” in his tweet.

This conversation was also joined by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi later who echoed Musk’s skepticism by raising questions about the transparency of EVMs in the Indian electoral process. Gandhi referred to EVMs as a ‘black box’ and called for the accountability and trustworthiness in democratic elections.

EVMs in India are a "black box," and nobody is allowed to scrutinize them.

Serious concerns are being raised about transparency in our electoral process.

Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability. https://t.co/nysn5S8DCF pic.twitter.com/7sdTWJXOAb

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 16, 2024

The debate around EVMs in India is not new and has often been a topic of contention among political parties.

Opposition parties in India, including those aligned under the INDIA bloc, have repeatedly called for enhanced scrutiny of EVMs. They advocate for a system where the number of paper audit trails (VVPATs) should match the EVM counts in all constituencies to increse transparency and strengthen confidence in election outcomes.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi once famously called to EVMs ‘Modi Voting Machine’ (MVM). Alongside him, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BSP leader Mayawati also called to bring back ballot system for voting in India.

Despite these demands, the government has time to time clarified that no plans to reintroduce the traditional ballot system are in pipeline. This decision aligns with the Election Commission’s position, which has always stoof by the reliability and efficiency of EVMs.

Addressing concerns raised by opposition parties regarding the effectiveness of EVMs, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar recently said that it is the responsibility of the Election Commission to address and alleviate these concerns among political parties.

During the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission dismissed reports alleging EVM discrepancies favoring the ruling BJP during mock polling in Kerala. The Commission assured the Supreme Court that such instances are rare, with only one confirmed case of mismatch between EVM and VVPAT counts reported in 2019 due to human error.

Furthermore, the Election Commission rejected a demand from the opposition INDIA bloc to revert to the previous method of counting postal ballots before the final round of EVM counting. The Commission cited procedural integrity, affirming that counting rules cannot be altered midway through the electoral process.