Vaccines are available to take care of the computer-machine viruses, but,as on date, no vaccine is available to counter the virus of dishonesty in men, to ensure cent percent reliability in any man-machine system. Clearly, the emerging vitriolic vocalising for the return of the ballot box is to have an election process which is more manipulative and not less, writes Prof. H C Pande
We are past masters in the art of taking two steps back when we have taken one forward. The riot being raised over the electronic voting machine is a case in point. The issue is simple and amounts to the possibility of hacking and/or manipulating the EVM currently in use.
The possibility of hacking, or, manipulating the EVM, in the actual voting booth setting has to be publicly demonstrated before making such wild claims. Technically the EVM is tamper proof as to any possible hacking. If at all there can be any tampering it could only be due to the human elements in the system which has to be pin-pointed, demonstrated and then taken care of. Doing away with the EVM, due to a fault outside the machine, is like throwing the baby with the bath water. If at all there is a fault in the system in totality, it should be corrected to make it fool-proof.
One has to remember that with human elements integrated in the system, the set-up can surely be made foolproof, but by no means, damn-fool proof. The heights to which the human beings can rise, or, depths into which they can fall, is unpredictable hence no such system can be of 24 carat.
Now coming to the conventional system of voting by casting ballots, it is apparent that the human component plays a far bigger role here than in the EVM setup. To start with the Ballot papers are bulky and one can easily put a mark somewhere to have it invalidated. Then, the manual counting of the heaps of ballots is prone to miscounting and the long time span required for counting also allows ample room for mischief. The large volume of ballot boxes is a problem for secure transportation and storage. The number of handlers required in this system is, therefore, much larger, consequently the probability of slip-ups is much greater. Here, the mistake, intentional or otherwise, is due to the human element only.
The possibility of shutting out human error, if intentional, is zero, because, as of now, it is impossible to read the human brain. However a machine can be made tamper proof and immune to manipulation, and, this is can be ensured one hundred percent. Machine manipulation can be taken care of in totality but not man manipulation, even partly. Going back to the ballot box does not improve the reliability of the voting process but only makes it more cumbersome and slow.
Vaccines are available to take care of the computer-machine viruses, but,as on date, no vaccine is available to counter the virus of dishonesty in men, to ensure cent percent reliability in any man-machine system. Clearly, the emerging vitriolic vocalising for the return of the ballot box is to have an election process which is more manipulative and not less.
(Prof. H C Pande is Vice Chancellor Emeritus , BITS, Mesra)
