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Electronic voting to save Rs.220 million

by Daya Perera

Elections will cost at least Rs.220 million less with the deployment of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), which will enable Sri Lankans to say 'yes' to their favourite political parties and personalities at the touch of a button.

Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake yesterday introduced Electronic voting machine (EVM) tailor-made for Sri Lanka. The EVM will save time, funds and labour, Commissioner Dayananda said. It will also be tamper-proof. Doing away with ballot papers alone will save around Rs.50 million, he added.

"It will enable us to conduct free and fair elevations with greater transparency, using less resources," the Commissioner told a media briefing at his office. Each machine, manufactured by Bharat Electronics, India, costs around Rs.22,000.

The Commissioner explained that the EVM will prevent election malpractices such as mass-scale rigging of votes and the removal of ballot boxes. It has already been successfully used in India.

Being battery-operated, it can be used in remote areas without electricity. The batteries last for 40 hours, far more than the 7 am-4 pm balloting time. The unit is lightweight and easily transportable. Moreover, visually impaired voters will be able to use the machine even without the assistance of polling staff.

Only two personnel will be needed for each polling booth when the machines are introduced. Counting will take less time and staff. Results could thus be announced much earlier.

The Commissioner declined to say when the EVMs could be used in Sri Lanka, noting that the relevant laws will have to be passed. The Department will go ahead with an awareness campaign on the use of EVMs.

A news release from Bharat Electronics Limited, a Government of India Undertaking based at Bangalore, India said: "Bharat has harnessed its tremendous R&D capability into customizing the immensely successful Electronic Voting System to suit the electoral process of Sri Lanka.

"Engineers from BEL had visited Colombo earlier this year and presented the Electronic Voting Machines to the Electoral Officers and Electoral Reforms Committee. Based on the feedback obtained at that time, a system has now been configured taking into account the differences in the electoral processes of India and Sri Lanka.

"During the recently held Indian General Elections, more than half a million EVMs manufactured and delivered by BEL were very successfully deployed.

The introduction of Electronic Voting in India has made the process faster (with declaration of results possible within minutes after polling), error free (no invalid votes at all), tamper resistant (common malpractices have been negated).

Since these machines are not networked and are stand alone machines, they cannot be hacked or programmes altered. With an extremely low demonstrated failure rate in India, the reliability factor of these machines is considerably high.

The customized machines demonstrated in Colombo meets the process requirements of the Sri Lanka elections and going by the Indian experience, even villages in remote places should not find operation of the machine any problem at all.

Around the world, electoral officials are examining various technologies to address a wide ranging array of voting issues like:

* System adaptability and acceptability by all stakeholders including common people residing in remote villages, probably some of them illiterate too.

* System functionality as close to conventional ballot paper system as possible.

* Cost-effectiveness and ease of deployment/maintenance of the system.

* System reliability and security in terms of tamper resistance, error free operation etc.

* Speed and efficiency of voting and results declaration.

These machines ensure tamper resistance through the following unique features:

* The program (software) is fused into an Integrated Circuit (IC) and is unalterable. These ICs themselves are hard wired and hence cannot be easily accessed or replaced.

* A unique serial number of the machine, embedded in the system, is validated automatically before the commencement of operations.

Any mismatch detected, being evidence of tampering, renders the system unusable.

* The Ballot Unit has to be activated by the Polling Official, using the Control Unit. Casting of a vote is prevented if the Ballot Unit is not enabled/activated by the official.

* A voter can vote once only. Once a vote is cast, the Ballot Unit is disabled automatically. The polling official reactivates the machine for the next voter.

* The operation of the "Close" button by the polling official ends the poll after which the system does not accept any more votes.

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