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Jaya moves court against electronic voting machines

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary and former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalitha Tuesday moved the Madras High Court, seeking to prohibit the Election Commission from using electronic voting machines in the coming elections to the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly.

In her petition, she submitted that the term 'ballot' and 'voting machines' have been defined in the Representation of People's Act, according to which secrecy of voting should not be infringed upon under any circumstance.

Citing Rule 49-O, she said a voter could exercise the 'no vote' option to avoid someone impersonating him under the conventional voting system. Such a voter, without marking his vote against any candidate listed in the ballot paper, could fold it and insert it into the box. Thus the secrecy of the 'no vote' ballot would be maintained. But in EVMs, there was no such provision for exercising a 'no vote'. On the contrary, the voter had to orally tell the presiding officer to score off his/her name as having exercised the franchise. But it could not be recorded in the EVM. Such a voter informing the presiding officer could be taken note of by the polling agents of various candidates, thereby depriving the secrecy of the ballot, she added.

Jayalalitha said unlike in a ballot paper, in EVMs when the voter pressed the button for the candidate of his choice, the vote would not get registered until the presiding officer also pressed the control button. If for any reason such as pressure from polling agents, or lack of attention or with deliberate intent, the officer failed to press the button, the voter can be disabled from exercising his franchise.

She contended that the democratic right to secrecy of ballot and independent exercise of franchise were violated in using EVMs in as much as the voter was dependent on the presiding officer.

She said both Defence Minister George Fernandes and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, who had objected to the use of EVMs when they were in the opposition, were now were pushing for it.

She said unreliability of computerised machines was glaringly revealed during the recent US presidential elections. Even in a developed country, till date only paper ballots are being used as they are hundred per cent reliable.

In Japan, the mother of the computer chip revolution, the EVM has been discarded as unreliable.

Citing Wayne Nunn, a computer expert, she said said there were seven ways in which the computer punch card ballot system could be manipulated. These EVMs could be initially tested in local body elections, she added.

The EVM, could be easily tampered with by anyone, she said and added that on several occasions repolls were warranted due to such incidents.

Submitting that an election dispute went on for three to four years, she said preservation of EVMs required many supporting apparatus, not to speak of guarding against computer virus.

She said she had written to the Chief Election Commissioner on February 6, seeking several clarifications.

UNI

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