As the debate over the susceptibility of electronic voting machines (EVMs) to electoral fraud heats up, India is looking at the experience of other countries. Till Jaeger, a German attorney, who visited India in February, believes that the use of EVMs is a violation of citizens’ fundamental right to information in a democracy. In an interview to Governance Now, Jaeger, who argued a landmark case that led the German federal constitutional court to effectively ban the use of EVMs, says that the most reliable mode of voting is the good old paper ballot system.  The following are the excerpts from the interview.

Why are we losing faith in technology?
TJ: Most electronic transactions, such as money transfers via internet, can be verified, but that is not the case with electronic voting. The reason is that casting of votes has to be a secret exercise; that’s a democratic norm as well as an element of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the case of electronic voting, citizens are not able to verify if their votes and the votes of their fellow citizens have been properly counted.

How can external hacking and fraud happen to the electronic voting machines (EVMs)?
TJ: There are two risks: hacking of EVMs by technically skilled persons and manipulation by insiders, that is, manufacturers and people responsible for safeguarding the EVMs. Experience in many countries has shown that there are always ways for manipulation despite the declarations of manufacturers and authorities to the contrary. Even in cases where you have complete trust in an EVM, the manufacturer could use fraudulent software without anyone getting the wind of it.

So, you think that EVMs are contrary to the principles of democracy?
TJ: The principles of democracy require elections to have a 'public nature', which in turn requires transparency. Transparency means each citizen should be able to observe all steps in an election procedure. Undoubtedly, the ability to secure elections against falsifications is much higher in the case where citizens are able to observe all steps of the election procedure. EVMs compromise that ability because it is impossible to say if a software-supported process of counting within a computer is correct or not. Citizens would simply have to trust authorities and manufacturers on the integrity of the software. This is problematic and stands in stark contrast to elections with paper ballots.
Transparency is not just a prerequisite for security of elections, but touches also on another crucial point. It is necessary to build citizen trust in the correctness of the election procedure and legitimacy of the people elected. Legitimacy requires the trust that the voting procedure was correct. EVMs cannot provide the same level of trust as voting by paper ballots.

What about India? Are Indian EVMs special, as claimed by the Election Commission of India? What should India do to make the system fool-proof?
TJ: Indian EVMs are stand-alone computers as German EVMs used to be. Therefore, the structural problems are the same. I’m not a software engineer and I cannot assess which ones are easier to tamper. However, the possibility of manipulation by insiders is certainly comparable in both countries.
The contradiction between the public nature of elections and the secret nature of voting renders it impossible to create a tamper-proof voting system that is entirely based on electronic voting. Some countries use paper trail systems or scanners to have the possibility of recounts. This might be a solution but involves organizational problems; for example, paper ballots have to prevail in the case of discrepancies.

Don't you think that reverting to paper ballot would take us back to a slow electoral procedure? It will again take a long time to finish the procedure, as opposed to the quick results we get from EVMs currently?
TJ: The German federal constitutional court acknowledged our argument that there are no constitutionally relevant reasons for a reduction of transparency… that the speed and simplicity of counting do not justify a lack of transparency.
I think it is very convincing to say that efficiency should not restrict basic rights of the voters.

Do you think that the level of fraud could be so big as to even affect the government formation of a country?
TJ: We don't know if and to what extent fraud happens. It is simply impossible to verify the correctness of the counting process as there are no paper votes for recount. This is a major problem since people do not trust the correctness of elections without having the possibility for verification. Even though elections might not have been rigged, you still can’t trust the integrity of the procedure that you can’t verify.

How much time it takes to hack the system?
TJ: I don’t know, but hackers claim to be able to manipulate an EVM in less than a minute. Indeed, German EVMs have been hacked in such a short time.

Why did Germany ban e-voting? Tell us about the German experience?
TJ: The German Federal Constitutional Court declared the use of EVMs unconstitutional. The main argument was that the use of EVMs lacks transparency and therefore violates a basic principle of democracy.  The complaint was filed in February 2007.  The court made a public hearing in October 2008 and published its decision on 3rd March 2009.

What is the alternative to the EVMs?
TJ: The best alternative is a paper ballot system. This system is well-proven and reliable. Of course, we could consider paper trail systems in big democracies, such as India.