Study to ‘expose’ EVMs

Hari Prasad, who was arrested last week for stealing electronic voting machines and released on Saturday, will present a controversial paper on how EVMs used in Indian elections can be tampered with at a conference on computer and communication safety. Testing technology

Updated on: Aug 30, 2010, 24:47:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Hari Prasad, who was arrested last week for stealing electronic voting machines and released on Saturday, will present a controversial paper on how EVMs used in Indian elections can be tampered with at a conference on computer and communication safety.

The paper — Security Analysis of India’s Electronic Voting Machines — is based on the first unauthorised analysis of an Election Commission EVM and co-authored by Alex Halderman of University of Michigan and Rop Gonggrijp, a technology expert instrumental in getting EVMs banned in Holland in 1993.

The conference in Chicago in October will be co-sponsored by IT majors like Google and Microsoft.

The paper shows how EVMs can be tampered with either by insiders or by using portable hardware devices, including mobile phones, to extract and alter vote records stored in the machine. This, the paper claims, can be done either by replacing the chips or inserting an additional one when the machines are being shifted. The replaced chips can escape the security test of election officers.

“It is just a possibility,” Halderman told HT. “Our study does not show that any election has ever been stolen by tampering with EVMs… nobody can reasonably claim, based solely on the results we have presented, that an election now settled should be overturned.”

The first doubts were raised by BJP leader L.K. Advani, who suggested that the country revert to ballot voting. He got support from parties including the CPM, RJD, AIADMK and TDP, who also met election commissioners. The Congress said the EC had the final authority over the mode of voting.

The EC was quick to rebuff the claims in the paper. “The demonstration has not shown any tamperability in the EVM. The EVM cannot be tampered with by any method shown in the demonstration,” K.N. Bhar, a commission secretary, told Hari Prasad, in a letter dated August 7. “It is not possible to replace any equipment in the EVM in the election scenario.”

PV. Indiresan former IIT director and member of both the committees, said the EVMs were examined by independent computer experts and tested for security.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.