Electoral Systems
https://epaper.loksatta.com/article/Mumbai-marathi-epaper?OrgId=459db38e8c&eid=7&imageview=0&device=desktop This article is from Marathi newspaper 'LokSatta'.
written by Shrikant Aagavane
This is the review of a book in english called ' how to rig an election'. written by Nic and Brian Klass
04/05/2024
How to Rig an Election and New Haven and London: Yale University Press (2018), 320 pp., ISBN 978-0-300-20443-8
Book Reiew by Ivan Jarabinský https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/spsr.12323
The new book by Professor Nic Cheeseman and Dr. Brian Klaas is a reaction to the current paradox of democracy today. While the number of elections peak, the quality of democracies deteriorates. The authors’ goal is to prevent democracy from projecting an artificial facade to often de-facto nondemocratic regimes. The book contributes to this goal by deepening the understanding of how elections can be manipulated, aims to provide of a set of measures to prevent or react to such problems.
The book's structure identifies six basic types of election rigging identified by the authors such as gerrymandering, vote buying, repression, hacking the election, stuffing the ballot box, and playing the international community. These strategies are later extended into more general tactics serving as a toolbox for potential manipulators. These topics are depicted and discussed based on the authors’ personal experiences from electoral observation missions in various countries around the globe where they conducted numerous interviews with local stakeholders. These experiences are combined with a number of well-established data sets (e.g. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), National Elections Across Democracy and Autocracy (NELDA), Electoral Integrity Project (EIP), etc.) and recent political science analyses. This approach provides deeper insight into understanding electoral manipulations, such as in which situations specific kinds of rigging are applied, how efficient they can be, or how to prevent them.
To list all the authors’ recommendations of how to avoid (or at least decrease the probability of) these problems would take too long. But some of them are cited repeatedly because of their potential to influence elections in many ways. These include increased transparency, voter education, election observation missions and these missions’ willingness to speak out about the country's situation even before the election day. With specific manipulative strategies, other new measures can be applied such as the careful utilization of new technologies, e.g. social media or technological and mathematical tools for gerrymandering prevention, etc.
First published: 21 August 2018
Books: Brian Klaas introduces 'How to Rig an Election' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_XsBf7IRHc
Brian Klaas introduces his latest book, 'How to Rig an Election', co-authored with Nic Cheeseman.
EVM VVPAT पर SC में हुए तर्क में कमी, सिर्फ 100% VVPAT slips की गिनती की मांग होनी चहिए थी- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7_3_bTjyzc May 2, 2024
Subhashis Banerjee, is a professor of Computer Science and had worked with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Delhi. He gave a deposition before the Citizens' Commission on Election (CCE) and said it is difficult to prove that EVM VVPAT machines are tamper proof.
In this interview he said the petitioners should've only demanded for the 100% VVPAT slips count for end to end verifiability. He further added that EVM is like a black box and no one can prove it 100% tamper proof.
The Supreme Court Judgment on the EVM VVPAT petitions is disappointing, he said. Although, the Election Commission had shared some new facts with the public during the hearing but the Indian elections still lack end to end verifiability which is possible only with the 100% VVPAT slips counting.
Not sharing the source code does not give you an iota of security..
Election commissioner Arun Goel’s resignation, weeks before the Lok Sabha elections are due with no clear reasons communicated, has once again cast a cloud on the transparency and functioning of the Election Commission of India.
Earlier this month, the V-Dem (or Varieties of Democracy) report stated that India dropped down to an electoral autocracy in 2018 and remained in this category till the end of 2023. More worryingly, under its clean elections index, the report said that India was among 18 countries in which the indicator for free and fairness of elections deteriorated substantially and significantly.
12/03/2024
India’s electoral bonds scheme has been declared illegal, a rare win in court for those resisting authoritarianism. But many elections, including the last general election, have been fought on these unlawful funds. https://thewire.in/government/electoral-bonds-narendra-modi-rbi
Many will not know how diabolical the electoral bonds enterprise was, and it is for their benefit that this is being written.
The scheme was announced by the Narendra Modi government through the 2017 Union Budget. The bonds would be a way for political parties to receive money through anonymous donors. The donor would have to reveal their identity to the bank while making the bond purchase, but the identity would not be revealed on the bond itself. Political parties could accept the money without being required to reveal who gave it. Voters would therefore not know who was funding and influencing political parties.
It also undid that part of the Companies Act, under which corporates had to disclose details of their political donations in their annual statement of accounts. Now they were no longer required to do so. The corporates had earlier also been limited to donating a maximum of 7.5% of their average three-year net profits to political parties.
The Supreme Court has now held that the scheme unconstitutional, something that was obvious to anyone familiar with the most basic details of what the bonds were for. But this should also alert us to how weak our institutions are and how, when they mean well for the country, they can just be ignored.
by Aakar Patel
20/02/2024
Why Election Commission's FAQs on EVM-VVPATs Don't Clear Cloud of Suspicion Over Electoral Process https://thewire.in/rights/why-election-commissions-faqs-on-evm-vvpats-dont-clear-cloud-of-suspicion-over-electoral-process Venkatesh Nayak
While concurring with the judgement (Association for Democratic Reforms & Ar., vs Union of India) authored by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud on behalf of the Bench, Justice Khanna in his separate opinion says- “
“19. The right to vote is a constitutional and statutory right,… grounded in Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, as the casting of a vote amounts to expression of an opinion by the voter… The citizens’ right to know stems from this very right, as meaningfully exercising choice by voting requires information. Representatives elected as a result of the votes cast in their favour, enact new, and amend existing laws, and when in power, take policy decisions. Access to information which can materially shape the citizens’ choice is necessary for them to have a say in how their lives are affected. Thus, the right to know is paramount for free and fair elections and democracy.” (emphasis supplied)
Chief Justice Chandrachud records the views of the Constitution Bench about the importance of the voters’ right to know in the following words:
“77. The following principles can be deduced from the decisions of this Court in ADR (supra) and PUCL (supra):
The right to information of voters which is traced to Article 19(1)(a) is built upon the jurisprudence of both the first and the second phases in the evolution of the doctrine, identified above. The common thread of reasoning which runs through both the first and the second phases is that information which furthers democratic participation must be provided to citizens. Voters have a right to information which would enable them to cast their votes rationally and intelligently because voting is one of the foremost forms of democratic participation;…” (emphasis supplied)
The levels of transparency that the ECI has adopted are hopelessly inadequate to meet the very high standards that the Supreme Court of India has set for our right to know, as citizen-voters.
https://thewire.in/rights/election-commissions-faqs-on-evms-dont-really-address-major-design-deficiencies Madhav Deshpande Considering the accepted vulnerability of the VVPAT, it becomes necessary to provide a recourse to every voter who complains of a VVPAT slip that does not match their choice of button press; because now with a programmable part of the VVPAT, it must be admitted that Madhavnon-transparent transformation of the vote is possible even within the VVPAT. VVPAT is a misnomer because it allows only view, not verification.
Answer to Q49 says “If a DRE produces a voter verifiable paper audit trail, it is software independent”. What is the basis for this definition? No reference is cited. The principle of “software independence” was introduced by Wack and Rivest and according to its application to a voting system, “A voting system is software-independent if an (undetected) change or error in its software cannot cause an undetectable change or error in an election outcome.” “Software System” in this definition includes both program and data constants. Since undetected data constants (like a * against an image or an x,y styled response as mentioned in “5” above) may be processed by the unknown program in the VVPAT and CU to cause error in the election outcome, undetected change can cause a detectable change in the election outcome and therefore the test for software independence of the VVPAT + CU fails even on theoretical grounds.