Remote Electronic Voting Machine

Context: The Election Commission of India (ECI) could not demonstrate a prototype of its new Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM), which would allow domestic migrants to vote in national and regional elections after the Opposition raised concerns about the logistical and administrative challenges to remote voting. The Congress had earlier urged the poll body to first “restore trust in the electoral system” and systematically address fears of the misuse of existing EVMs.

Current issue

• As many as eight national and 40 regional political parties held a discussion with the Election Commission on Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM).  
• Some parties wanted exact data of migrant labourers, while others feared technology would be misused; others demanded the demo be first held in states.
• Matters related to legal, administrative aspects and logistical challenges of remote voting were also discussed.

What Is Remote Electronic Voting Machine?

• The RVM is an idea that will bring approximately 30 crore electors, currently not exercising their franchise, into the election fold. The inability to vote due to internal migration is one of the prominent reasons to be addressed in order to improve voter turnout and ensure participative elections. Approximately 85 per cent of the internal migration is within the states.
• To address this problem, the commission has developed a prototype Multi-Constituency Remote Electronic Voting Machine which can handle multiple constituencies from a single remote polling booth.
• RVM is a modified version of the time-tested model of M3 EVMs, to enable voting at remote polling stations.
• The commission has been working with the two Public Sector Units, that are manufacturing the existing EVMs – Bharat Electronic Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) to develop a robust, failproof and efficient stand-alone system for remote voting.
• The proposed RVM system would enable domestic migrants to cast votes in their home constituencies, from remote locations. These remote voting booths would also cater to voters from multiple constituencies of a state.

How To Use The RVM?

• The voter should pre-register for the remote voting facility by applying online/offline within a pre-notified time, before elections in his home constituency commence.
• Voter details will be verified at the home constituency and the voter’s request for remote voting will be approved after successful verification by marking him/her as a remote voter to participate in elections.
• Special multi-constituency remote voting polling stations will be set up in the places of the voter’s current residence.

Features Of RVM

• It is a standalone, non-networked system having the same security features as the existing Indian EVMs and provides the same voting experience to the voter as the EVM. The RVM system is essentially a modified version of the existing EVM system.
• RVM will be used in multi-constituency polling stations set up in remote locations.
• A single Ballot Unit (BU) can cater to multiple AC/ PCs at a single polling station by using a dynamic ballot display instead of the usually printed paper ballot sheet on BU.

RVM contains the following components

• RCU (Remote Control Unit, which has similar controls to the existing CU. The RCU can also store the result of the total number of votes as per candidate and the constituency).
• RBU (Remote Ballot Unit, which consists of the electronic dynamic display (BUOD) instead of a fixed ballot paper sheet in a BU, BUOD (Ballot unit overlay Display), which can dynamically display the list of candidates based on the constituency number read by the constituency card reader).
• RVVPAT (Remote Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail, which has similar functionality to existing M3 VVPAT. In addition, it can store symbols of different AC/PCs with candidate images).
• CCR (Constituency Card Reader, which is a barcode reader to read the constituency number of a particular voter. It is connected to the PDCU Unit).
• PDCU (Public Display Control Unit, which acts as an interface between CCR, Public display and RBU. It enables the list of candidates of the particular constituency to be displayed on public display and the RBU simultaneously).
• RSLU (Remote Symbol Loading unit, which is used to capture symbols of Remote AC/PCs candidates from laptops under the control of Home RO. The same symbols will then be loaded into RVVPAT under the control of Remote RO).

How do existing EVMs work?

The structure of the current electronic voting machine (EVM)

• EVMs started being used on a larger scale in 1992 and since 2000, have been used in all Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections.
• There have been three iterations of the machine with improved features, the latest one being the M3 model which was manufactured from 2013 onwards.
• Multiple political parties in 2010 approached the ECI to come up with a mechanism that could help verify that the EVM had recorded the vote correctly as intended by the voter.
• The ECI, thus, developed along with two Public Sector Undertakings (PSU), the Voter Verified Paper Trail Audit (VVPAT) machine to have a paper trail in the voting process.
• The use of VVPATs has become universal in elections since mid-2017.
• The current EVM setup has a Balloting Unit (BU) which is connected to the VVPAT printer, both of which are inside the voting compartment.
• The VVPAT is connected to the Control Unit (CU), which sits with the Presiding Officer (PO) and totals the number of votes cast, on its display board.
•  The VVPAT, which is essentially a printing machine, prints a slip with the poll symbol and candidate name, once the voter presses the key on the BU.
• This slip is visible to the voter on the VVPAT’s glass screen for seven seconds after which it gets dropped off in a box inside the VVPAT.
• Once a vote is cast, the BU becomes inactive till the PO schedules the next vote by enabling it again from the CU.

What are the concerns about EVMs?

• Concerned civil society organisations, civil servants who have overseen elections, academicians, journalists, former judges, and political figures formed the Citizens’ Commission on Elections (CCE) in 2020, which conducted analysis, recorded depositions from national and international field experts and released a report in 2021 titled, ‘Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT System Fit for Democratic Elections?’.
• The report highlighted the widely recognised ‘democracy principles’ to be adhered to while conducting public elections. It stated that the election process should not only be free and fair but “also be seen to be free and fair”, meaning instead of being told to trust the process the general public should be provided with provable guarantees to facilitate this trust.
• The report points out that the details of the EVM design, prototype, software, and hardware verification are not publicly available for technical and independent review, rendering it available only for a black-box analysis, where information about its inner workings is not accessible
• However, the ECI says that unlike other countries, Indian EVMs are standalone, are not connected to the internet, and have a one-time programmable chip, making tampering through the hardware port or through a Wi-Fi connection impossible.

What are the problems with VVPAT?

• Dr. Subhashis Banerjee, the head of IIT-Delhi’s computer science department and a member of the CCE, told The Hindu that for the voting process to be verifiable and correct, it should be machine-independent, or software and hardware independent, meaning, the establishment of its veracity should not depend solely on the assumption that the EVM is correct.
• Dr. Banerjee contends that the current VVPAT system is not voter verified in its full sense, meaning, while the voter sees their vote slip behind the VVPAT’s glass for seven seconds, it does not mean they have verified it.
•  Former IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan, who has overseen both Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, notes in his 2021 paper, that the “voter should have full agency to cancel a vote if not satisfied; and that the process to cancel must be simple and should not require the voter to interact with anybody”.
• Under the current system, if the voter disputes what they have seen behind the screen, they are allowed a test vote in the presence of an election officer, and if the outcome of the test vote is correct, the voter can be penalised or even prosecuted. Mr. Gopinathan and the CCE report argue that this penalisation is discouraging.
• Additionally, the assurance given by the ECI that the EVM-VVPAT system is not connected to any external device has been questioned by former civil servants and multiple studies.
• For the VVPAT to be able to generate voting slips, the symbols, names and the sequence of the candidates need to be uploaded on it which is done by connecting it to a laptop.

What are institutional safeguards?

• The ECI has said time and again that EVMs and their systems are “robust, secure, and tamper-proof”, owing to the technical and institutional safeguards in place.
•  The ECI claims that the safeguards, such as the sealing of machines with signatures of polling agents, first-level checks, randomisation of machines, and a series of mock polls before the actual voting, cannot be circumvented.
•  However, domain experts and former observers have shown that vulnerabilities can arise.

How will RVMs be different?

• The EC states in its concept note states that the Multi-Constituency RVM for migrant voting will have the same security system and voting experience as the EVM.
• This essentially means that the challenges mentioned above with regard to the current EVMs will persist when it comes to the RVMs.
• Besides, the Commission says the RVM can handle multiple constituencies (up to 72) from a single remote polling booth. For this, instead of a fixed ballot paper sheet, the machine has been modified to have an electronic dynamic ballot display which will present different candidate lists corresponding to the constituency number of the voter read by a constituency card reader.
• The ECI has added a digital public display unit or a monitor to act as an interface between the constituency card reader and the BU display.
• As for the commissioning process of the machine, the electronic ballot will be prepared by the Returning Officers (ROs) of home constituencies of voters and forwarded to the remote RO for uploading in the SLU.