EVM are technically extremely secure, appeals of Chief Electoral Officer

Mumbai, 2 Aug, 19: “Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) are technically very secure and can never store false vote and it is impossible to violate security by it. The citizens should not believe the rumors spread about EVM” appealed Chief Election Officer of the state, through a press relies.

The Chief Election Officer further said that the EVM are extremely safe. There are several reasons for believing that EVM cannot register inaccurate votes. It is the duty of the citizens to take information about EVM. During the recent Lok Sabha elections of 2019, around 61.3 crore voters across the country voted with EVMs from over 10 lakhs polling stations and confirmed their voting on VVPAT.

“Each EVM is checked and sealed in the presence of representatives of political parties. Also, their representatives sign the machine seal. Since EVMs are allotted to all constituencies and polling booths, there is no preconception about which polling stations will be sent to which polling station. The list of contesting candidates is fixed on the day after the withdrawal deadline. Until then, one cannot even predict which number of buttons on the EVM will be given to the candidate” said Election Officer.

The serial number of EVM machines used at the polling station is given to each candidate. Before the actual voting begins, the aesthetic vote is taken. In which each candidate’s representatives register their own vote and after verifying the results on the EVM, they can be 100% sure by verifying the VVPAT sleep. Only after their certification, the actual voting begin. Machines have been certified by more than one billion voting representatives in the elections of 2019.

After completion of all process of voting, all voting representatives seal and sign the machine. It also checks whether the machine’s serial number matches precisely before counting. Only 17 votes were wrongly claimed in VVPAT. But after those 17 voters voted again, their claim was found to be wrong.

When compared to the votes in the respective EVMs with 20, 687 VVPAT, the total votes from only 8 VVPAT were not matched. Also, only 51 votes (about 0.0004 % of the total votes) were not matched in the count of around 1.25 crore votes and this negligence was due to human error and no defect was found in the machine. The EVM machine has a very robust protocol for administrative and security, and no one can break it.

VVPAT letter confirms the opinion that voters filed during the Lok Sabha polls. Hence it also urged citizens to not to believe on any rumors about EVM.