Even such politicians and citizens who per necessity sport only a scant, pro-forma allegiance to the principle of electoral democracy in India may not contest the living fact that the most fundamental of all “basic features: of the constitution” is the injunction that elections must be “free and fair” and be seen to be so.
Now, what elections can be deemed “free and fair” where voters are not able, in secrecy, to verify whether their chosen candidate has been accurately registered? In the absence of such systemic and guaranteed transparency, can it be said that the most fundamental right of the citizen and the uncorrupted sanctity of the democratic building block has been procured and safeguarded?
Whatever unfashionable hiccups the good old system of voting by ballot may have had, did it not have the primal and ineluctable merit of ensuring that no mysterious machinations intervened between the signature of the voter and the validity of the vote? Ballots could indeed be spoilt by the main force, and ballot boxes pilfered, but none of that had the power to leave us in doubt that such shenanigans did take place when they did, so that a re-poll could be arranged.
That the induction of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) yielded both convenience and dispatch in the matter of counting, besides accompanying corporate benefits, may not be contested. But here is the inescapable point – these benefits came at the democracy-defacing cost of drowning the voter’s choice in a shroud of opacity which the choice-maker has no means of breaking into.
The voter, the theoretical lord and master of the democratic system, is thus rendered blind as Samson, free to believe that even in his blindness his might and muscle remain intratable.
Honourable officials who man, or have manned, the conduct of the electoral process tell us that now we have the VVPATs, namely, a paper trail in a separate machine that can tell us where the voter’s vote indeed went. And, indeed, coming as this facility did after much brainstorming and numerous complaints, presently only about five EVMs per voting district are allowed to be tested for paper trails, based on the supposition that this sample is more than adequate to reflect how every voter voted.
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Statistically plausible as this position may be, I confess my total inadequacy in judging this technical matter. Can this limited provision be interpreted as safeguarding the fundamental right of every voter to track their vote and know its outcome in each case? Quite emphatically and alarmingly not.
By no power of sophistry can it be established that the brick-layer of the system of constitutional democracy can thus see whether the brick she has lifted and passed on has gone to build the castle she is working to build or been used elsewhere alongside the construction site.
And the authorising constitutional requirement of “free and fair” franchise without which no government may claim to be legitimate is thus vitiated and rendered secondary to convenience and dispatch.
Then there is the other worry, still unresolved, however, the powers-that-be may claim to have tackled the suspicions of all and sundry – on a scientific/theoretical principle, there is no machine yet invented which is not amenable to human defacement. And if we are as of now not able to engineer or test such defacements, it is only akin to a time when we did not know why lightning in the sky happens, and so on ad infinitum.
Why else, pray, would the most advanced democracies of the world have chosen to relegate the EVMs after years of use, and return to the simple and transparent honesty of the ballot? So the question – why is it that in Bharat, as the contention about the EVM proceeds apace, the ruling BJP should be the only political interest clamouring loudly against the dumping of the machine in favour of the ballot, just as it also seems to be the only political interest that constantly defends the workings of the current Election Commission (EC), no matter how germane the questions raised against its functioning?
Instances where voting percentages have been shown to have gone up rather mysteriously an hour before close of polls and final count, where some 99% of battery charge in the machines has been seen to be intact at the conclusion of a polling day, where the machine has coughed up far more votes than have existed on the voter roll in particular polling booths, etc. are sought to be noised away with little substance of reason – a procedure hardly adequate to meeting the fundamental constitutional injunction of “free and fair” franchise. Particularly when it is shown that invariably these distortions aid and seemingly abet the fortunes of the BJP.
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A favourite counter argument thrown at sceptics by the BJP, and, indeed some honourable judges, is this – you complain when you lose but not when you win. Such instances of loss or win can indeed be the cleverest part of the machinations.
Remember the man who broke the German code of the submarines? Well, it was thought fit by the allies to sink a boat or two of their own not to let the Reich know that their code had indeed been breached. In short, can the EVM be said to be the old Greek device of the dramatists who introduced a god on a machine, Deus Ex Machina, usually in a crane from a height, at crucial junctures to sort out difficulties that seemed intractable?
Thus, if a village in Sholapur in Maharashtra, incredulous at the results yielded the other day by the machine, argued that they be allowed to hold another poll by ballot to determine what was what, why were they not allowed to do so? Would not this excellent procedure have shed decisive light on the darkness in which the machine for now plunges the republic? Indeed, till such time as the machine is finally discarded, it would be excellently appropriate for an EC anxious to ensure “free and fair” franchise to resort to this alternate vote by ballot wherever questions come to be raised. Surely, this practice, carried out with honest endeavour, would furnish the most reliable course of action with regard to either retaining or saying goodbye to the Deus Ex Machina.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
