The Election Commission on Saturday said the EVM “hackathon” will be held from June 3, reported ANI. Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi invited both national and regional parties to nominate three people each for the challenge. Political parties need to confirm their participation by 5 pm on May 26.
The Election Commission ruled out the possibility of rigging Electronic Voting Machines as it held a demonstration on Saturday. “Manipulation of EVMs at manufacturing stage is totally ruled out due to stringent security measures,” Zaidi said. He, however, added that to bring in more transparency in the system, all future elections would be held with EVMs equipped with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail System.
Addressing the media in Delhi, Zaidi said the VVPAT-equipped machines would be ready by September 2018. The poll monitoring body said that those who had complained about the tampering of EVMs could not provide “credible material” to prove it.
The demonstration and press conference were held after repeated allegations that the EC’s electronic voting machines had been tampered with in recently held polls. The allegations were first made after the BJP won elections in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand by a massive majority. Later, they also won the civic polls in Delhi.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s Saurabh Bhardwaj had also held a so-called demonstration, using a lookalike EVM, where he claimed that the machines could be hacked in 90 seconds. The EC refuted his party’s allegations, saying lookalike machines did not function the way the real one did.
“Trojan Horse [a key press sequence] can’t be inserted into EVMs since chip on EVM is one-time programmable and doesn not have a Wi-fi chip,” Zaidi said on Saturday.
The EC had also held a meeting with representatives of several political parties to assuage claims of EVM tampering. After the meeting, the EC had said that it would henceforth use only Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail machines for elections. The VVPATs provide voters with a copy of whom they have cast their ballot for, providing proof of their vote.
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