The faulty EVM controversy has been laid to rest, but voters in Madhya Pradesh remain confused

Farmer Ram Naresh, 50, was one of those who cast his vote at Didi village in Ater Assembly constituency of Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind district in the bye-elections held on Sunday.

After pressing the button on the Electronic Voting Machine, Naresh said that he fixed his eyes on a small contraption next to the voting machine to ensure that the symbol on the paper slip that the contraption printed – which was displayed behind a screen for a few seconds after which it dropped into a sealed box – matched that of the candidate he had voted for. Only then did he leave the booth.

Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines record each vote on paper and allow voters to verify this paper record while casting their votes electronically. It was tested across five states in July 2011, and used for the first time in an election during an Assembly bye-poll in Nagaland later that year. Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines were subsequently used in eight constituencies in different cities during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and in several polling stations during the Assembly elections in five states in February and March.

Madhya Pradesh controversy

The paper trail machines have been used in Madhya Pradesh for the first time during the bye-elections in Ater and Bandhavgarh, a constituency in Umaria district, on Sunday. The results will be out on April 13.

On March 31, a demonstration of these machines in Bhind led to media allegations that the Electronic Voting Machines being used for the bye-elections seemed to be configured to vote only for the Bharatiya Janata Party as the paper trail had apparently dispensed only slips with the BJP symbol. However, a committee set up by the Election Commission found that there was no truth in these reports. Later, an independent investigation by Scroll.in also suggested that the controversy had apparently originated from misreporting by one newspaper, which was picked up by the national media.

The allegations had not fazed Naresh. “It was on the radio the next day and they said there was no problem with the machines,” he said. “So what is the controversy about?”

Naresh added that he preferred the Electronic Voting Machines to ballot papers that were used in elections earlier. “If machines can be tampered with, so can ballot boxes,” he said. “So what is the gain? The ballot system is also slow and generates long queues outside polling booths.”

Confusion on ground

However, not everyone in the constituency shared Naresh’s faith in voting machines.

Around 15 km away, in Mudiya Khera village, a group of voters stood outside a polling station, chatting with the police personnel deployed there. One of them was 56-year-old school teacher Tole Ram. Ram had clearly examined the paper slip generated after he cast his vote, but he is still not convinced that Electronic Voting Machines cannot be manipulated.

“I would always support voting through ballot papers,” he said. “It is a plain process. Machines can always be manipulated.”

His views were echoed by fellow villagers Harish Singh Norwariya, 50, a farmer, and Bhagwan Das, 58, a farm labourer. All of them had examined their VVPAT slips too after voting.

“The controversy has created a lot of confusion,” said Prabhu Dayal Sharma, a resident of Madaiyapura village, around 20 km away from Bhind. “However, the trials conducted in villages after the controversy have helped in creating some sort of confidence among voters.”

Damage control?

Trials of paper audit machines were conducted between April 1 and 8 in as many as 102 village panchayats in Ater constituency after directions from the Election Commission.

Though some saw this as a damage control initiative following the demonstration controversy in Bhind, Rakesh Khare, the district coordinator under the Swachh Bharat Mission, who monitored the exercise, said that the village-to-village trial plan was chalked out before the March 31 demonstration. “The objective was to make voters aware of the functioning of the VVPAT machine as it is being used for the first time,” he said.

During these trials, according to protocol, no symbol corresponding to any party or independent candidate contesting the elections could be used. And for every demonstration conducted, electoral officers had to fill up a memo in which they mentioned details like the name of the gram panchayat where the demonstration was being conducted, the number of persons attending each trial and number of persons participating in the dummy voting.

“On ground, villagers used to gather around the officials and ask them a lot of questions about the VVPAT machine and the controversy too,” said Khare. “I hope we have been able to reduce the confusion caused by that episode.”