How EVM, VVPAT machines work? Election Commission's live demo, open challenge dates tomorrow

The Election Commission is holding a live demonstration of how its Electronic Voting Machines and the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trial machines work. Tomorrow's live demo comes amid allegations by Opposition parties that the voting machines are vulnerable to hacking.

Amid Opposition allegations that India's Electronic Voting Machines are vulnerable to hacking, the Election Commission is set to hold a live demonstrations of how EVMs and Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail machines work.

The demonstration will be held on the sidelines of a press conference the Commission has called on its previously announced 'EVM challenge'. According to The Hindu, the EC will announce the dates and the schedule for the EVM challenge at the press conference.

The live demo will be held at the Plenary Hall in Vigyan Bhawan tomorrow between 1 pm to 2.50 pm. The Commission will be looking to put to rest claims that EVMs can be tampered with, allegations that have indirectly questioned the  sanctity of India's electoral process.

ALL ABOUT THE EVM CONTROVERSY

1. Allegations that EVMs could be tampered with first emerged following the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party won a huge majority. Bahujan Samaj Party chief Maywati claimed that EVMs were tampered with ton ensure the BJP's victory in UP.
2. The Election Commission responded quickly, writing a five-letter to Maywati, rubbishing her claims. The EC rejected the possibility that voting data in the EVMs could somehow be changed or tampered with.
3. Meanwhile, Opposition leaders slowing started jumping on the tampered-EVMs bandwagon even as Mayawati herself fell silent on the issue. Adding fuel to fire were reports from Bhind in Madhya Pradesh that at a demonstration by an EC officer on March 31, all votes cast turned out to be for the BJP.
4. An Election Commission probe into the Bhind episode, however, found that the media reports about the EC officer's demonstrations were false. A report by the website Scroll further said that banter by the EC officer in question had led to an altercation between the officer and the reporters present on at the demonstration.
5. Opposition parties continued raising concerns over whether voting machines could be trusted. There were even calls for India to revert to the ballot paper-system of voting.
6. All the while, the Election Commission kept reiterating that EVMs cannot be hacked or tampered with. The Commission also started opening up to the possibility of holding a hackathon of sorts where political parties, engineers and experts would be allowed to try hacking into EVMs.
7. Earlier this month, the Aam Aadmi Party, whose chief Arvind Kejriwal has been particularly vocal on the EVM issue, held a demonstration in the Delhi Assembly. Party MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj brought in a dummy EVM machine and proceeded to show how the machine could be tampered with to only record votes for a single party.
8. A few days later, the Election Commission called an all-party meeting on the issue where it once asserted that EVMs were foolproof. Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi also said that henceforth, all future elections in India would use EVMs linked to VVPAT machines. Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines dispense paper slips showing whom a voter has cast his/her ballot for. he paper slips are collected by the machines and can't be taken away by the voter; they serve simply to verify that the vote was cast correctly.
9. At the all-party meet, the EC also said that it would soon hold an 'EVM challenge', where parties could try and prove allegations that EVMs can be hacked.