On Elections and Coup - Us v US

 [ Schadenfreude -  noun, scha·​den·​freu·​de | \ ˈshä-dᵊn-ˌfrȯi-də 

: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others ]

One could not have imagined that this year would give another opportunity to write, so soon. However, this morning, my facebook feed was overrun with news about how the supporters of the US President had run amok in the Capitol building, effectively stalling the proceedings. It has been described variously as an Insurrection, or a Coup. That things should come so far in one of the world's oldest and biggest and definitely the most advanced democracy is definitely a matter of concern. However, with a sheepish grin, we must say that for many of us here, it is also a matter of schadenfreude!

There are many reasons for things coming to this level - the gradual erosion of niceties in public discourse, aided by the electronic veil of social media, but not without significant contribution from the mainstream media too. Anyone in doubt should watch 'The Loudest Voice' on Hotstar. The truly outlier nature of the incumbent President is a big factor, as the afore mentioned erosion has taken place across the globe, but few respectable countries have seen such shameful spectacles. However, what really connected both - frenzied mobs and a paranoid megalomaniac, in a common intent and purpose, was the purported "stealing of the election."

I have always been much thankful for the invention of the Electronic Voting Machines, especially as a person who has to get elections conducted, quite periodically. Whenever the debates over the propriety of EVMs had come up, some detractors have brought up the question, as to why advanced nations like the United States do not use them, if EVMs are so good? I hope, again, with a guilty feeling of schadenfreude, that this question has been laid to rest.

While most qualities of EVMs have been enumerated well in the above linked article, the most significant advantage it gives is the quick, and immutable calculation of results. While the quickness is a great administrative convenience, for which I shall be eternally grateful, the immutability is what gives the result its strength. Manual counting of ballot papers is a long, tiresome process, and prone to errors, both honest (especially if the counting has been going on for a long time) as well as malafide. Hence, there is, to begin with, a justification for recounting, and later, when such errors are discovered, there is a cascading distrust on all the counting which has happened. It gives the losing candidate a fig leaf of the possibility that the count was wrong (and the election was stolen from him). Some candidates, like in the District Board Constituencies in my subdivision in Meerut, just lie down on the roads for a while till they are chased away by an overworked and really annoyed police. Some, as in yesterday night's disgrace, exhort their supporters to run over the national legislature.

When I wrote that article, the use of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail, or VVPAT for short, was not universal. Detractors could say that the total of the votes being shown by the machine cannot be verified with each singular vote. Any person who has worked with the EVM knows that it is teue. Then again, justice not only needs to be done, but also seen to done. The public at large could not be so sure, earlier. Not anymore. For the uninitiated, the VVPAT is a printer cum box that prints a slip with the election symbol polled for, which is then displayed in a window for 7 seconds before falling into the box, much like a ballot paper. Thus, firstly, each voter can see that the slip printed matches with the vote he has cast, and secondly, at the end, the slips in the box can be counted as one would with ballot papers, and matched with the result being displayed electronically. In the last election to Lok Sabha, five of the booths were randomly picked in all Assembly Constituencies, for the said comparison. None of them was found mismatched, across the whole country. There is a provision where any voter can get the fidelity of the VVPAT machine checked during the poll, by asking for a dummy vote in public, so that anyone can see whether the button being pressed and the symbol being printed match or not. Not a single challenge has succeeded in proving the VVPAT wrong, till now. [Of course, there are some challenges with the VVPAT - all administrative. The next few lines are technical and may be skipped by those who are put off by such discussion. Unlike the rest of the EVM, which is purely electronic, these are electro mechanical. So they suffer from all the ailments expected of a mechanical device - they can jam, their printing mechanism can get stuck, the paper roll can tear off, and they are susceptible to mechanical and thermal shocks. This simply means a lot of replacements and loss of time. Nothing that cannot be improved over the years. Then again, the 7 second display slows down the poll, but it is small price for full transparency. There is another administrative and legal issue of initiation error - where, after the mock poll, the polling officer fails to remove the slips from the box after resetting the machine. In this case, on verification, the electronic count would fall short of the manual count, by the exact margin of the mock poll results. Conversely, if a polling officer ends the mock poll by counting the slips, but fails to reset (CRC) the machine, the electronic count would exceed the manual count by the exact margin as of the mock poll! With the mock poll certificate in hand, it is not an unresolvable issue!]

Soon we are to embark on yet another election to the rural local bodies of the State. Polling would be held in the traditional ballot paper and box manner. Each voter in this election casts votes for 4 posts - members of the Wards of Village, Block and District Panchayat, as well as for the village Pradhan. Provisioning 4 EVMs for each booth would not be possible. However, we now have multipost EVMs. States like Kerala and Maharashtra have used them in local body elections. Even we have used them in the Urban local body elections way back in 2017. In fact I was responsible for the first use of this technology in the State. While the programming of this machine is a bit more complicated than regular ECI EVMs, for the voter, it simply presents 2 or more ballot paper on the ballot unit, and he may press one button next to each of the ballot papers, to cast his votes on each ballot. During the counting, the machine displays results for each ballot sequentially. It would have heartening to see its use in the upcoming elections too. However, these machines are still not enough in supply. May be we would see them in the next cycle. So meanwhile, we find ourselves in the unenviable position of more sleepless counting nights, and candidates throwing tantrums. Our only solace would be the thought that it could never get as bad as the United States!