Although he has an egg symbol as his profile picture, the man behind Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, in a series of tweets, has urged people to avoid using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), claiming they are hackable. His remarks are timely given the up-rising discourses of the security of EVMs especially after the Puerto Rico Primary Election controversy.
However, a vain situation can be seen in India, where the ECI is self-promoting the third-generation M3 EVMs as tamper-proof. Among the netas, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the former Union Minister, refuted Musk’s remark, saying that the statement was a ‘very sumptuous, unconvincing statement’ that was untrue.
He has said that it is false; they specifically manufacture EVMs for India; there are no connections; no Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or Internet; controllers that are factory-programmed and cannot be reprogrammed; they can be designed and manufactured securely, which has been done in India.”
A team of professors from reputed IITs of India has been instrumental in the recent modification of Indian EVM. The ECI also avails an excellent Technical Expert Committee (TEC) to review and verify that the devices devised are very secure and strong.
While the dispute on the safety of e-voting systems is still hot across the world, how India attained to design and protect its EVMs seems to share an opposite story than Musk’s nuanced generalization.
