EVMs do not provide voters with a receipt of the vote they cast. It is a huge leap of faith that the machine not only allocated the vote to the candidate intended by the voter but also allowed the same vote to be counted for the same candidate. Given the stakes, electoral malpractices are rampant. The Election Commission has not simplified voting, it has made the simple process of making a choice extremely complex, drawing attention away from the ability of the vote to be counted, to the paraphernalia of elections. This is almost like the magician or thief who distracts attention from what they are really doing in order to perform magic and trickery.
VVPAT was introduced to create an audit trail of votes cast on an EVM. VVPAT is an audit trail assuming each voter verified the vote printed by the VVPAT EVM. Assuming that the print outs are actually voter verified votes; they can be counted to verify the votes counted from the control units of EVM. The control units counted correctly if the VVPAT votes match.
There was an average of 1,708 EVMs in every Parliamentary Constituency in 2014. While each EVM is capable of storing 3,840 votes, an average of 904 voters assigned to cast votes on every EVM during the 2014 elections.
To confirm that the votes counted across EVMs by the control unit is the same as those counted by the VVPAT, the votes polled for each candidate on the control unit and in the paper trail should not be statistically different. To determine this, staticians compare the votes counted from a sample of the EVMs using both the methods. The question is how many comparisons will establish confidence that their choice of EVM was not biased or just a fortuitous one?
A good deal about choosing the number of EVMs to count depends on the variability expected between the EVMs. Each EVM or booth has demographically high variation or could be homogeneous. For example, because of their demographic makeup, some polling booths could be expected to be favouring one candidate over another. In case of high variability, larger number of booths will need to be compared for VVPAT and control unit counts. Typically for constituencies that have 1,708 EVMs and high variability in booth voting, a choice of less than 200 booth VVPAT for counting would be poor to certify that the control units have counted the correct votes.
That said, VVPAT itself poses several concerns and challenges.
The first concern is that voters have no means to confirm verification of the printout shown to them. The printout is merely a paper vote, it is NOT voter verified. The term VVPAT is therefore incorrect. There is no means to establish voter verification actually happened. The second is that the VVPAT does not have any means of authenticating itself as a genuine vote. It is quite possible that the counted printouts from VVPAT were not the ones printed during the voting. The third is that the VVPAT is not counted by any third party auditor. It is the same entity that has counted the votes on the control unit that counts the VVPAT. This is bad auditing practice.
Ideally voters need a receipt or a passbook entry that their vote has been deposited to the account of the candidate. They should be able to move their vote to any other candidate any time. Only then will the people be sovereign in the democratic republic of India. Unless the Election Commission is progressive and initiates serious reforms, we will have to wait for either the Supreme Court, an unlikely Parliamentary intervention or a people’s revolution to make change happen.
[Dr. Anupam Saraph is a Future Designer, Professor of Systems and Decision Sciences and a noted expert in governance of complex systems. He can be reached @anupamsaraph.]