Electronic voting machines (EVMs) can indeed be rigged. Contrary to the Election Commission of India’s stonewalling and denials, new research and experiments by American computer scientists have established that electronic voting systems can be manipulated in a variety of ways.

Some of the new evidence has been published in a New York Times article ‘The Myth of the Hacker-Proof Voting Machine’, which provides startling details backed by technical findings and expert interviews.

The intense research being conducted in America is due to domestic controversies about whether the 2016 presidential election was free and fair. However, the insights into EVM vulnerability are both relevant and timely for India.

Many political analysts are convinced that the outcome of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections would hinge not so much on the mood of the electorate but on whether polling is conducted through EVMs or the old system of paper ballots and manual counting of votes.

Although this might appear to be needlessly suspicious or cynical, the latest US research indicates that blind trust in EVMs might be misplaced.

Opposition parties in India would, therefore, be well advised to redouble their efforts to demand paper balloting in the 2019 elections by confronting the election body with the latest technical research and findings of globally renowned computer scientists and experts.

Whenever allegations of EVM manipulation have been raised, the Election Commission has invariably come out with two standard assertions: one, that the machines used in India are fully secure and tamper-proof; and two, that the EVMs are “stand-alone” devices unconnected to the Internet and hence immune from remote interference.

Both these claims can now be challenged. The third argument that the machines used in Indian elections are manufactured under strict supervision by reputed public sector enterprises can also no longer be accepted at face value for two reasons: a) recent Right to Information data has thrown up troubling questions about the logistics of EVM transport and distribution; and b) the US findings point to potential for serious mischief at the manufacturing stage itself.