Electronic voting machine (EVM): The cheat box
MD. Iqbal Hossain
In this modern electronic age people has made their life dreamy and easier using this technology, and at the same time people has become aware of its negative sides based on applications. One example is the use of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). The first EVM was used in Kerala province in India in 1982. Since then a long time has passed a way experimenting on EVM. During this period other countries in Europe and America also experimented on EVM from technical and transparency point of view. Both point of views were equally important however transparency was even a more concern to politicians. Europe and America worked on EVM much more than India. They have expensed hundreds of Million of dollars for research on EVM.
Bangladesh Election Commission is going to use EVM for the first time in Chittagang City Corporation election in a single word. I have noticed this news and felt to write something on EVM. During the course completion on Computing and Information System under the London University I realized the truth of security constraint of information in Information Technology. If information has value that is less than the cost of breaking the security line then the information is secured. This means security of information is relative; there is nothing like absolute security in information technology. On the other hand politics is a highest valuable thing in the world. One can do anything to win the political game. EVM is now 28 years old technology on which thousands researches were performed and eventually it was proved that "EVM is not a transparent method" for voting and "is not helpful for practicing the democracy".
Counties which performed researches on EVM finally have banned the use of EVM in voting except the India. Those countries are Netherlands, Ireland, German, Italy, and America. Even in England the recent parliamentary election was accomplished with paper ballot where as electronic voting system is already exist in England and other EU countries, they is use it for election events in large organization only because in public election events transparency is a question. In research it is found that the possible highest degree of safety level of EVM's circuit does not stand with the penetration of hacker. It means EVM is certainly temperable where information is high priced. Practically it is not possible to acquire a trustworthy election result where as all electronic modular circuits are available in market and there are millions of skilled hands who are able to use those circuits to hack the EVM. More Than 2 millions of such hands are already available in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. More over, in India, China, Korea, and Taiwan there are many different sized company who fabricate electronic circuit into chipsets on demand of customers. They can pirate available chip even with new added program functions!
If one wants to temper the EVM then all possible ways are available for him/her. The chief of the "Net India" Hari K. Prasad has discovered this truth in his research project on EVM with The University of Michigan where computer professor J. Alex Halderman and the renowned computer hacker and technologist Rop Gonggrijp from holand, Michigan University's students Scott Wolchoky and Eric Wustrowy, and engineers Arun Kankipati, Sai Krishna Sakhamuri and Vasavya Yagati at Net India were the research members.Rop Gonggrijp was the instrumental in having EVMs banned in the Netherlands.
In 2004 and 2009 India national election used EVM for voting. The election result and procedure have been criticized because of widespread reports of election irregularities. Despite this criticism, many details of the Indian EVM's design have never been publicly disclosed, and they have not been subjected to a rigorous, independent security evaluation. In some province in India candidates with new faces have received 40%-50% vote even though they are not so familiar to the public of relevant constituencies and even they were not the resident of that constituency. India election commission demands that their EVM is fully temper-proofed because EVM's program code is hardwired into electronic chipsets and no one can enter the machine. This argument has no value to technologists. In fact Indian EVM has more weakness then the EVMs of Europe and America.
Professor J. Alex Halderman performed study for California state and now EVM is banned in this state along with other 21 states in US. The rest of states are now under the lawsuit against the use of EVM in public election. Dr. Till Jaeger in Germany has filed a lawsuit against lack of transparency in usage of EVMs in German Supreme Court that resulted in effectively banning EVMs in Germany.
The court also expressed a guideline that emphasize that voting must be such a transparent process in which a general voter can understand each steps of voting process from casting vote to counting vote.
In India some NGO and important persons have field lawsuit against usage of EVM. VV Rao of NGO Jana Chaitanya Vaidika has filed a lawsuit in Supreme Court, Omesh Saigal IIT Delhi and retired IAS official have challenged Election Commission of India about vulnerability of EVMs, Satinath Chaudhary who filed lawsuit with Supreme Court, Mr. Sanjay Parikh, Supreme Court attorney and several others such as Rahul Mehta who showed lack of transparency in EVM , and Ajay Jagga an attorney very active on raising EVM issues in India.
EVM can be tempered in many ways. I mentioning only four of them.changing the display unit of the EVM: modified display unit will show tempered number of balanced vote count for each candidate to win the election result for desired candidate.
Using memory overwriter: a memory overwriting circuit chipsets can be hooked onto the real memory chip with a clip to overwrite the previous memory and write new memory data into the EVM memory to distribute vote count to all candidate so that desired candidate win the election result at that booth.
the above two methods can be implemented in addition with a Bluetooth chipsets. Now these two works can now be done with a mobile phone from distance.These tempering can be done in a minute without any physical or electronic traces.
4. EVM's inside code can be programmed in way that no one can trace its fraudality ever. Whenever engineer check its transparency the EVM just works as a innocent baby. But, it will do its real job just before the vote counting because it has received a fraction of a signal from distance mobile phone through the tiny Bluetooth circuit chip far embedded inside the main processor of the EVM. No one will be able to trace it.
Remember the pirate copy of circuit chip can be fabricated with additional custom function. Now this chip is ready to penetrate the production line of EVM with the help of dishonest persons in industry. The finished EVM is now waiting for the ghostly signal from distance mobile or satellite.
Technology and counter technology are changing day by day. Even more powerful hacking technique may emerge or in exist at this moment. Who knows, who is doing what things? One can say EVM device box will be completely un-penetrate-able physically.
But we don't know who will try to penetrate it, but we know at least one thing, someone has made it! If the EVM is completely sealed and inside is un-seen-able then question arise again what is inside then? Only the mastermind of the design of the EVM circuit can answer it.
When all over the world the use of EVM is banned and being banned Bangladesh Election Commission is going to use EVM in public election. During past caretaker government period Prime Minister Shekh Hasina raised a demand of using transparent ballot box. She intelligently emphasized on the transparency of the voting process. Now BEC is going to implement the black box EVM that is technologically proved to be real black box in public election. I hope the Election Commission will be aware of this thing.
