Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing

On Monday, the Singapore Democrats published an article claiming that Singapore has purchased Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) from India. The SDP itself based its commentary on this article from The Hindu, an online Indian-based news update service.

The SDP has raised a big fuss over it. But, in the words of The Bard, they are making much ado about nothing.

In the article, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), the supplier of the EVMs, stated that it is currently in negotiations with several countries, including Singapore. The company has also customised its EVMs to suit Singapore's purposes.

At this juncture, I want to make a distinction between BEL's EVMs and generic electronic voting machines. The former will henceforth be referred to by its acronym, which was the one assigned to it by the company. The latter will be labelled 'e-voting systems', in order to prevent confusion.

But nowhere in the article is a declaration that Singapore has, in fact, purchased the EVM.

Replace 'Singapore' with 'an international corporation', 'BEL' with 'a global electronics giant' and 'EVM' with 'latest office and desktop solution', and the process can be demystified. What happened, in effect, was that BEL tried to tailor its EVMs to court business from Singapore through a demonstration of its capabilities. But Singapore did not purchase the EVM.

Nor does Singapore have any intention of doing so, as reported today in The Straits Times. While I have been critical of The Straits Times in the past, it is fairly unlikely that this is simply another piece of propaganda; you cannot, after all, hide the existence of a machine when it is going to be a platform for the next elections, and there is little propaganda value in this article.

E-voting systems do have their faults, and e-voting in general is presently flawed, as reported in this post by the SDP, and again in the above-mentioned aticle by Steven Stigall and Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, among many other sources. But the main flaw in these warnings is that they were not referring to the model in question.

This distinction is significant because BEL's EVMs were designed to minimise electoral fraud. The machine's microcontroller's uses One Time Programmable Read Only Memory (OTROM). After initial programming, the programming codes cannot be read or altered by any external source, including the manufacturer. The code itself accepts no data other from any external device save for the balloting unit. As the EVM is a stand-alone unit, it is impervious to hacking attempts from the Internet. Data registered in the machine is encrypted for further security. After the poll is officially closed, no further votes may be made.

In addition, practices set down by the Election Commission of India can be adopted to further reduce the chances of bogus votes. Before polling begins, the Presiding Officer at the polling station will show the result screen of each EVM to polling agents, and allow the agents to conduct a mock vote to demonstrate that the EVMs work as advertised. Replace 'polling agent' with 'independent observer' and another check and balance can be established. After voting ceases, the Presiding Officer will press the 'Close' button, effectively shutting down the EVM and preventing anybody from inputting a vote.

Perhaps the best vote for BEL's voting machine is the 2004 Indian General Election. In the face of illiteracy and lack of infrastructure in remote areas, the 2004 General Elections were widely considered as the smoothest election held by the world's largest democracy. This was facilitated through education and awareness programmes, and executed through the widespread use of BEL's EVM. Indeed, BEL's EVM has received the least flak and the most praise compared to other e-voting systems.

The SDP has conflated BEL's EVM with other e-voting machines. BEL's model was designed to facilitate free and fair elections. By not making this distinction and not checking the facts, the SDP has wrongly smeared BEL's reputation.

And by not checking the facts before publication, the SDP has shot itself in the foot.

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