More Women Voters, Low Crime Rate: How EVMs Win Over Paper Ballots

EVMs have shown to be successful in other developing nations like Chile and Brazil.

Are you still scratching your head wondering how EVMs can be hacked and the motherboard changed in 90 seconds?

The Brookings Institution, an American research group, in a recent study showed that since EVMs have come into the voting landscape, more people have gone out to register their votes. Sisir Debnath of Indian School of Business (ISB), Mudit Kapoor of Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi and Shamika Ravi of Brookings Institution carried out the study.

And if you are convinced that ballot papers are the only way to prevent voter fraud, the study also reveals that the instances of fraud and booth capturing have actually reduced since EVMs came into being. Even other countries like Brazil and Chile, which use EVMs, have seen more people getting enfranchised.

Here are five ways that EVMs changed elections in India – for the better:

Voter Turnout Increased

After the problems riddling the ballot paper system were deliberated upon, voting machines were used for the first time, as an experiment, in 1998 in Paravur Assembly by-election in the state of Kerala. Following the initial success, 1,50,000 machines were bought by the ECI in 1990 to use them on a national scale.

Introductions of EVMs led to a significant decline in electoral frauds, particularly in politically sensitive states, which were subjected to frequent re-polls due to electoral rigging, the study noted.

As booths would have to be captured for longer, the chance of detection of the fraudsters became much higher and it also increases the total cost of voter fraud.

Margins Voted More

The study has found that electronic voting has encouraged more women, lower castes, senior citizens and illiterate people to vote.

The reason was that when paper ballots were used, these sections were more intimidated by violence and their votes were more likely to be surreptitiously cast by someone else.

Lowering Rejected Votes

Votes were prone to being discarded in the ballot paper system if the person didn’t mark their vote next to their preferred candidate clearly. Sometimes it was done as a sign of protest, but more often than not the vote would get discarded because of an inadvertent error.

In a multi-party system with narrow winning margins, an increase in valid votes can potentially change election outcomes, the study said.

Electronic Voting and Electricity

Electricity and its provision is one of the key issues during state elections and also falls under state control.

The study says that as fair elections provide the electorate a means to improve the responsiveness of the elected officials by making them more accountable, they assessed the impact of EVMs on the provision of electricity.

It found that one year after elections, the luminosity falls by 9 percent in those constituencies, which use EVMs. The electricity supply increases after that.

Crime Rates Dropped

Law and order and the police force fall under the state’s jurisdiction in India and the study analysed the data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and studied the effects of EVMs on crime.

In a rigged electoral system, politicians fail to provide security to common people because they depend on criminal elements in the electoral process. Politicians, therefore, end up supporting and protecting criminals instead of being able to prevent them.

The analysis suggests a very strong link between the introduction of EVMs and decline in crime.

It suggests that the use of electronic voting machines reduced total crimes by 31 percent in states with high percentage of criminal MLAs as compared to other states after one year of election.