- NEW DELHI — A US
official's claim over possible hacking of electronic voting systems in that
country was on Friday met with a reassuring calm by the Election Commission of
India (ECI) with sources highlighting the Indian EVMs' superior technology and
no use of Internet or Bluetooth during voting as foolproof shields against
manipulation.
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- The US official, in a viral video circulating on social
media, made the claim about election integrity while referring to on-going
probe in that country into ‘flaws’ in electronic voting systems and urged a
switch to paper ballots.
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- Claiming that there was no reason for an alarm, sources at
ECI said that the US and the Indian EVMs were not comparable due to several
additional security measures incorporated into our machines.
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- “Some countries use Electronic Voting Systems, which are a
mix of multiple systems, machines and processes including various private
networks including Internet etc. India uses EVMs which work like simple,
correct and accurate calculators and cannot be connected to either Internet,
WiFi or Infrared," said an ECI source.
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- Reassuring voters and the Indian public, an election panel
official said: “These machines have stood legal scrutiny by the Supreme Court
of India and are invariably checked by the political parties at various stages,
including the conduct of mock polls before polling starts. More than 5 crore
voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips have been verified and matched
while counting in front of political parties.”
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- Earlier, the US official said in the video, posted on social
media platform X: “We have evidence of how these electronic voting systems have
been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time and vulnerable to exploitation
to manipulate the results of the votes being cast, which further drives forward
your mandate to bring about paper ballots across the country so that voters can
have faith in the integrity of our elections."
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- The US debate over the vulnerability of electronic voting
systems in that country comes at a time when the Opposition parties, led by the
Congress, in India have made several attempts to blame the EVMs for its
repeated poll debacles.
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