With polling of votes underway in Maharashtra and Haryana, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Monday, 21 October once again raised the issue of EVMs and suggested an alternative to the use of Voter Verified Paper Trial Audit (VVPATs) machines.
Retweeting a story by The Quint’s Poonam Aggarwal, Singh proposed a Ballot Paper verified EVM system instead of the existing EVM-VVPAT combination.
“Haryana-Maharashtra Elections 2019: Here is how EVM-VVPAT can be manipulated due to a major technical glitch. EC is aware of lacuna but continues to be silent. If the CEC still insists on EVMs then I have a request,” he said while retweeting the story.
“After pressing the button on ballot unit, instead of the voter seeing the picture on screen for seven seconds, the printer should give the voter a printed vote in his (their) hand, which he (they) can physically put in a ballot box,” he further said on Twitter.
Saying that the Election Commission would put forth the argument of the process being time consuming, Singh said that it would not leave political parties with any scope for complain.
"If the voter has put the printed vote in a ballot box, then he or the candidates or the political parties cannot complain. And the time taken would be the same. So, it would be a reliable system... of a combination of EVM and Ballot Box.” he tweeted.
“I feel all political parties who requested CEC to do away with EVM and return to ballot box should consider this option for a greater reliability in our elections, which would strengthen our democracy and again call a meeting to consider this option.”Digvijaya Singh on Twitter
“If the number of votes in the ballot box don't match the number in the counting unit then all the polling booth votes in that constituency should be counted through ballot boxes and then only the result should be declared,” Singh further added.
Singh’s comments came as voting was underway not on in in Maharashtra and Haryana, but also in 51 other constituencies for bypolls across 18 states.
The VVPAT machine was included in the election process by the Supreme Court in 2013, to assure voters that their vote has been correctly registered by the EVM.
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