It is a well-known fact that India is the world's largest democracy, but not many know that India pioneered and perfected mass electronic voting. The country deployed Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for the first time anywhere in the world on May 19, 1982, in Kerala's North Paravur constituency. Fifty out of the 84 polling stations used the first-ever secure direct digital vote recording devices. The Netherlands followed almost a decade later in the 1990s.
"EVMs and India have a fascinating history; they came well before the Information Technology revolution. IBM had just introduced personal computers in the USA a few months earlier when India got EVMs," explains Professor RajeevaL. Karandikar from the Chennai Mathematical Institute, adding, "They are truthful machines."
"Most of us know that India invented zero long ago, but more recently, in 1982, India became the world's first country to use that 'zero' in electronic voting machines, as electronics is all about zeroes and ones. Today, nearly a billion people cast their votes on tamper-proof third-generation EVMs. So, there should be no doubt that India is the mother of democracy and today a digitally empowered democracy. India was a pioneer in using electronic voting machines and remains the fountainhead of innovation for secure electoral voting," explains a director of an IIT deeply involved in designing and securing EVM technology.
"EVMs are a matter of pride for India as they cannot lie, and I have no doubts about the credibility of the machines," asserted T.S. Krishnamurthy, a former Chief Election Commissioner under whose tenure EVMs became universal.
Today, about twenty-five countries use digital voting. According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), these include the USA, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Namibia, Nepal, Bhutan, Armenia, and Bangladesh.
Globally, there are several types of digital voting. India uses fully electronic voting, while other countries employ systems where only the counting is electronic. Some countries, like Estonia, have started using internet-based remote voting, while others use internet-based voting at designated polling stations. Some use optical scanners with both networked and non-networked machines.
In most countries, electronic voting devices are made by private companies, considered less cyber-secure than the government-owned facilities in India that manufacture EVMs. The USA, for example, uses various forms of electronic voting without a nationwide standard. Some believe blockchain-based voting could be the way forward, and experts suggest that India could enable Aadhaar-based voting in the future. However, all internet-based voting is prone to cyber fraud.
This year, half the world's population will hold elections, but only in India are 969 million voters eligible to cast their votes digitally in over 1.05 million polling booths. In the first four phases of voting, ECI data shows that 451 million Indians have already cast their vote, more than the entire population of the USA.
Since 2004, all parliamentary elections in India have been conducted using EVMs. ECI data indicates that some 3.2 billion votes have been cast on EVMs to date, without a single proven case of tampering.
Interestingly, several countries have initiated electronic voting but abandoned it after short trials due to cybersecurity concerns. This includes the Netherlands and Germany, where networked machines eroded public trust.
"The benign beauty of India's EVMs is that they are standalone devices, almost like basic calculators, making them tamper-proof and hacking-resistant," explains an expert from IIT-Bombay who assisted the ECI in designing the EVMs. The latest third-generation EVMs, or M3 machines, are not connected to the internet or Bluetooth, making remote hacking impossible. If tampered with, these machines enter a safety mode, making them inoperable until reset by the original manufacturer.
While some foreign experts claim India's EVMs are antiquated, the ECI argues that their simplicity adds an extra layer of security. To hack India's 5.5 million EVMs, one would need to tamper with each individual machine, a near impossibility.
In the 21st century, Indian EVMs and digital voting are considered the gold standard. India's pioneering innovation of EVMs empowers 1.4 billion Indians to vote freely and fairly.