Question

ballot paper should replace electronic voting machine...essay

Answer 1

Which is better, an EVM or a paper ballot?

The questions have been doing the rounds for a while and some political parties are trying to put this question deliberately on our minds to negate the fact that they lost elections. But let's put these thing aside and talk about pros and cons of each method.

First Ballot Papers

First of all our country is huge. There are more than 80 crore registered voters in the country according to EC in 2014 which will certainly rise. So counting of such a huge population's mandate is very difficult and there is always risk of counting errors.

In the recent panchayat elections in Odisha, which was conducted using ballot papers, there were many reported cases of miscounting. Many candidates won after a recounting by the state EC. We could not certainly know whether the first counting was correct or the second one. And many alleged of political foul play

We have seen and heard various cases in WB, how CPM used to capture booth. In the panchayat elections in 2017 in odisha, there was a video of booth capturing which went viral in media.

Can election officials not report wrong calculation or even sometimes change some of the papers if they wish or forced to do.

I will give you another example. In the rajya sabha election in haryana, Dr Subhas Chandra backed by BJP was accused of winning by wrongdoing. In a video which was made viral, you could watch a particular BJP MLA going to the booth and taking unusually more time, to simply write a simple name. Then came some congress MLAs who took normal time. And again another BJP MLA came and again he took unusually more time. What is more unusual is that both of them were seen doing suspicious things and even one of bent down the table. Later when Subhas Chandra won it was revealed that the votes of those congress MLAs were dismissed for using a different pen than provided by the EC. Simply put the two BJP MLAs exchanged the pen of the congress MLAs. So you can understand the extent to which ballot papers can be manipulated.

Lastly political parties will never cease of criticising until we are a democracy.

Secondly EVM

In our world every computer, smartphone, smart TV and literally everything can be hacked. But does that mean we are always hacked. So do we give up our smartphones and computers and revert back to the old system of paper and writing!!!

EVMs are independent machines which can be let's say for instance can be hacked. But they are not connected to any other device, internet. So how can so many EVMs be tampered with. For that to happen, the entire team of EC has to help.

Now many are arguing that we can install a chip, like used in petrol pumps in UP and control it remotely. That's possible again for a single machine. You have to install the chip in every machine for that to happen. Again a huge team of experts is required!!!!

If any party had any doubt, why didn't they voiced anything about it before. EVM had a successful run of 15 years and suddenly when one election didn't go according to some party's projections, it is bad.

It is really humorous that Mayawati tells the media that she fielded 98 Muslim candidates in Muslim majority areas. So she ought to win. And she had the time to talk to the people to ask who they voted for. And all these allegations came barely 3–4 hours after announcement of results.

And as for our favorite Kejriwalji, what can he say of his landslide victory in 2015 assembly elections. Did they hack the EVMs????

Political parties will never stop their allegations and even if everyone else will, AK will never. He seems to just allege everyone and anything.

And as for some who say that even America follows Ballot Papers, to them I say why don't we follow their two party system. Why don't we follow their Presidential election. Its simple. The systems they follow are better for their country. And what we do is best for our country.

And now recently in the EVM challenge it has been proved that EVMs are non-tamperable. So where are our so-called protectors of democratic principles????

so I think ballot paper should replace electronic voting machine

Answer 2

Electronic Voting Machines are being used in Indian General and State Elections to implement electronic voting in part from 1999 elections and recently in 2017 state elections held in five states across India. EVMs have replaced paper ballots in local, state and general (parliamentary) elections in India. There were earlier claims regarding EVMs' tamparability and security which have not been proved. After rulings of Delhi High Court, Supreme Court and demands from various political partiesElection Commission decided to introduce EVMs with voter-verified paper audit trail system. The VVPAT system was introduced in 8 of 543 parliamentary constituencies as a pilot project in Indian general election, 2014.
A candidate can know how many people from a polling station voted for him. This is a significant issue particularly if lop-sided votes for/against a candidate are cast in individual polling stations and the winning candidate might show favoritism or hold grudge on specific areas. The Election Commission of India has stated that the manufacturers of the EVMs have developed a Totaliser unit which can connect several balloting units and would display only the overall results from an Assembly or a Lok Sabha constituency instead of votes from individual polling stations.

The control units do not electronically transmit their results back to the Election Commission, even though a simple and unconditionally secure protocol for doing this exists. The Indian EVMs are purposely designed as stand-alone units to prevent any intrusion during electronic transmission of results. Instead, the EVMs are collected in counting booths and tallied on the assigned counting day in the presence of polling agents of the candidates.