The recent remarks made by Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk on X (formerly Twitter) regarding electronic voting machines have ripple effect within India’s political theatre. Though Musk didn’t directly target India with his comments about the South Asian country, they ignited Indian political figures, including Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav, who started questioning the credibility of India’s EVMs.
Following this, the so-called voting irregularities in Puerto Rico, where, due to the faulty operation of Dominion Voting Systems machines, wrong vote totals were given, have also come to the forefront again. This has again caused debate as to the security of electronic voting systems.
But, Indian officials have largely defended the usage of EVMs across the country. Mr. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a former minister, explained that EVMs used in India are specially developed to ensure that they cannot be hacked since they cannot internally or externally connect to the internet. In addition, the Indian EVMs use one-time programmable microchips.
The critics have developed the concept of EVM obsolescence with Indian features as an extra layer hackers cannot hack millions of standalone units. Though some foreign experts have expressed concern about India’s EVMs, the Election Commission of India argues that the machines have built-in Multiple Layers of Security to guarantee the sanctity of votes.
While this debate progresses, the concern for electronic voting has assumed precedence as nations consider the democratic process and, more importantly, the public trust to be cleared.
