Trust, but verify

Most of the reasons given so far about BJP’s recent loss in Bihar elections appear quite superficial.  Nothing that Modi and BJP could have said or done would make any difference. The BJP defeat in Bihar elections is the result of casteist and communal forces jointly going after the BJP, the former campaigning and scaring voters that a BJP win would be bad for the continuation of casteist (caste based) quotas in education and jobs and the latter twisting the reality (even while using the Sahitya Academi Awards Wapasi gimmick in the aftermath of Kalburgi and few other unfortunate killings) to wrongly brand BJP as an intolerant party.

Anyway, the BJP or someone else (perhaps a few losing candidates on their own) should try now to verify the accuracy of counting from the EVMs (electronic voting machines). For this, there needs to be a manual recount of recently cast votes in four or five constituencies (at least one or two), following the request by the losing candidates. This will show whether the result from the manual recount is same / similar as the EVM’s count, and if there is a difference in the two counts then the result from the manual process should be accepted and the other (from EVM directly)  rejected.

Seva Lamberdar wrote:This will show whether the result from the manual recount is same / similar as the EVM’s count, and if there is a difference in the two counts then the result from the manual process should be accepted and the other (from EVM directly)  rejected.

why? unless you can prove that there is gross electronic manipulation of the results, if there are minor discrepancies, i am more inclined to believe the machine result. humans are error prone.

Seva Lamberdar wrote:Anyway, the BJP or someone else (perhaps a few losing candidates on their own) should try now to verify the accuracy of counting from the EVMs (electronic voting machines). For this, there needs to be a manual recount of recently cast votes in four or five constituencies (at least one or two), following the request by the losing candidates.

why? are you out of your mind? the bjp failed cuz they underperformed and the opposition saw an opportunity and came up with a winning strategy. what is so astounding about it that the world needs a recount? get over it.

it's very refreshing to see indina men and women at the polls. on election day, whether you're a prince or pauper everyone gets one vote. it's evident from the pictures that the poorest and most malnoursihed and totally illiterate were suffering greatly  and benefitted in no way from whatever modi was proposing and they decided to do away with him.

take the cow - it was livestock, it was an investment, something that one could sell to pay their kids fees, or give away for their daughter's dowry (and on this very good mahurat i will give you along with one daughter, two cows, three sheep, four dining schairs etc)  - and modi turns it into a white elephant. then food - red lentils - which are a staple, become unaffordable.

well, the elections are the only time that a poor man or woman can make their voices heard and i think they've made themselves very clear today and intelligently.  so you need to respect that.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Seva Lamberdar wrote:This will show whether the result from the manual recount is same / similar as the EVM’s count, and if there is a difference in the two counts then the result from the manual process should be accepted and the other (from EVM directly)  rejected.

why? unless you can prove that there is gross electronic manipulation of the results, if there are minor discrepancies, i am more inclined to believe the machine result. humans are error prone.  

I really doubt whether India has a good/robust system where the hacking of EVMs is not possible. Esp the security setup can be easily bought over or compromised. Even in US there were some cases of EVM fraud/coverup. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Election_Solutions

Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is a proponent of electronic voting and the examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania, stated "It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system." Douglas W. Jones, a professor of computer science at theUniversity of Iowa, stated "This is the barn door being wide open, while people were arguing over the lock on the front door." Diebold spokesman David Bear played down the seriousness of the situation, asserting that "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software. I don't believe these evil elections people exist."[18]
On October 30, 2006, researchers from the University of Connecticut demonstrated new vulnerabilities in Diebold AccuVote-OS optical scan voting terminal. The system can be compromised even if its removable memory card is sealed in place.[19]
On November 2, 2006, HBO premiered a documentary entitled "Hacking Democracy", concerning the vulnerability of electronic voting machines (primarily Diebold) to hacking and inaccurate vote totals. The company argued that the film was factually inaccurate and urged HBO to air a disclaimer explaining that it had not verified any of the claims.[20][21][22] However, corroboration and validation for the exploits shown in Hacking Democracy was published in a report for the state of California (see above).
In January 2007, a photo of the key used to open Diebold voting machines was posted in the company's website. It was found possible to duplicate the key based on the photo. The key unlocks a compartment which contains a removable memory card, leaving the machine vulnerable to tampering.[23]
A report commissioned by Ohio’s top elections official on December 15, 2007 has found that all five voting systems used in Ohio (made by Elections Systems and Software; Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems); and Hart InterCivic) have critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election.[24]
On July 17, 2008, Stephen Spoonamore made the claim that had "fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections." Spoonamore is "the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies." He claims that Diebold Election Systems Inc. COO Bob Urosevich personally installed a computer patch on voting machines in two counties in Georgia, and that the patch did not fix the problem it was supposed to fix.[25] Reports have indicated that then Georgia Secretary of StateCathy Cox did not know the patch was installed until after the election.[26]

Did modi hack the evm's in 2014?

Sevaji, there's a spot on Ben Carson's campaign for you.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Seva Lamberdar wrote:This will show whether the result from the manual recount is same / similar as the EVM’s count, and if there is a difference in the two counts then the result from the manual process should be accepted and the other (from EVM directly)  rejected.

why? unless you can prove that there is gross electronic manipulation of the results, if there are minor discrepancies, i am more inclined to believe the machine result. humans are error prone.  

to rule out the possibility of any manipulation or malfunctioning, deliberate or otherwise, in  the vote recording and counting software for EVMs (electronic voting machines).

pravalika nanda wrote:

Seva Lamberdar wrote:Anyway, the BJP or someone else (perhaps a few losing candidates on their own) should try now to verify the accuracy of counting from the EVMs (electronic voting machines). For this, there needs to be a manual recount of recently cast votes in four or five constituencies (at least one or two), following the request by the losing candidates.

why? are you out of your mind? the bjp failed cuz they underperformed and the opposition saw an opportunity and came up with a winning strategy. what is so astounding about it that the world needs a recount? get over it.

it's very refreshing to see indina men and women at the polls. on election day, whether you're a prince or pauper everyone gets one vote. it's evident from the pictures that the poorest and most malnoursihed and totally illiterate were suffering greatly  and benefitted in no way from whatever modi was proposing and they decided to do away with him.

take the cow - it was livestock, it was an investment, something that one could sell to pay their kids fees, or give away for their daughter's dowry (and on this very good mahurat i will give you along with one daughter, two cows, three sheep, four dining schairs etc)  - and modi turns it into a white elephant. then food - red lentils - which are a staple, become unaffordable.

well, the elections are the only time that a poor man or woman can make their voices heard and i think they've made themselves very clear today and intelligently.  so you need to respect that.

Nothing wrong in checking out if the vote recording and counting software in the EVMs worked properly throughout.

FH, you are right about the EVM software being prone to easy manipulation. Thanks for posting the above article.

Hellsangel wrote:Sevaji, there's a spot on Ben Carson's campaign for you.

Why HA, are you managing his election campaign and doing the hiring of people for it?

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

Hellsangel wrote:Sevaji, there's a spot on Ben Carson's campaign for you.

Why HA, are you managing his election campaign and doing the hiring of people for it?

Sevaji, no one can manage his campaign. But going by his recent statements he could use people like you.

truthbetold wrote:Did modi hack the evm's in 2014?

Look at the campaign against Modi and BJP prior to these elections. The Opposition not only scared voters about caste quotas if BJP won, but also made a big noise about intolerance on the part of BJP while even using a number of deaths in the past few months as proof of intolerance.

Anyway, the only way to really quantify / gauge the level of intolerance created by statements from various BJP leaders is to consider the number of actual deaths (about 5 in 3 months or 90 days, i.e. 0.0000004% of total population of 1.25 billion Indians) attributed (wrongly or rightly, which is quite debatable) to so-called intolerance and compare / contrast it with other occurrences of unnatural deaths of people in India in the same period (e.g. 33900 deaths in road accidents in 90 days, i.e. 375 deaths per day in road accidents in India according to the Internet).

As you can see, statistically speaking, the above number (5 deaths) is quite insignificant (0.0000004% of total population and 1/6780^th of those killed in road accidents). In addition, there was a great variation in the reasons behind 5 deaths; one person supposedly got killed for eating beef, while another allegedly died for opposing idol worship and caste system even though many Hindus, such as in Arya Samaj, do the same without getting attacked or killed.  Thus, it seems the protests and campaigns by Opposition and the returning of awards by various people (writers etc.) were mostly politically motivated, while using the intolerance (on the part of BJP leaders and officials) mainly as a convenient excuse. 

Regarding the uncertainty in using EVMs for recording and counting of votes, Indians should be wary of that and remain watchful. These machines (especially EVMs’ software) have the potential for manipulation / tweaking beforehand and during operation, as well as on site and from a remote location. Perhaps it will be better that there is a vote counting manually after each election, in a few constituencies at least, to verify the EVM results -- A kind of quality control and assurance for EVMs and their vote counting.

Here is an interesting comment (on the recent Bihar elections vote counting), copy-pasted below (in color), from a blog-post (http://creative.sulekha.com/trust-but-verify_626126_blog?c=2383669#2383669).

"I noticed sudden and dramatic shift in favor of the Grand Alliance around 10.10am (initially NDA was leading in most precincts from start at 8 am that day...) ..." Suresh Rao

>>> It gives the impression of a mid-operation tweak during vote counting by the EVM, just like the mid-course correction using a remote control in the Mars mission. The manual recount of votes will help put all doubts to rest.

Incidentally, unless there is a permanent, hard-copy record available for EVM votes, similar to the paper ballots marked directly by the voter (e.g. in the case of postal ballots), the recounting of EVM votes makes no sense at all. The information from the initial vote taking by using EVM (by pressing the button etc. to “mark” the vote on EVM) as well as the recording / storing that information later inside the EVM memory (for counting and recounting of votes, etc.) seems possible to manipulate and alter with the help of an appropriate software.

Consider the following two statements (a) and (b), in italics below, which I came across recently.

(a) "I noticed sudden and dramatic shift in favor of the Grand Alliance around 10.10am (initially NDA was leading in most precincts from start at 8 am that day...) ..."

(b) “The initial leads indicating a great sweep for the NDA was the result of Postal Ballots which were taken for counting at the first instance..”

The above (a & b) definitely indicate different trends in voting and vote counts. The votes on paper (postal) ballots, which are a type of permanent record, are favoring one political alliance, while the other, using perhaps the EVMs (electronic type vote recording and data storage, which is easy to alter and manipulate through a software and therefore is not as permanent as the paper / postal ballots), seem to be favoring the other political alliance.

This certainly raises questions on the appropriateness of using EVMs in elections, especially if votes are cast on EVMs electronically (by pressing a button etc.) and not backed up by a hard / permanent paper copy which could be used later during recount etc. to verify the EVM results.

Interestingly, some richer and more advanced countries (such as Canada) which can easily afford EVMs for vote taking and recording in elections still prefer to use the paper ballots.

People need to remember something important about the nature and performance of EVMs before taking the results from them for granted.  These days even the most secure military, financial and Govt. sites are regularly infiltrated and the information from their computers, machines and data banks stolen, altered or destroyed. So what to speak of simple EVMs used for entering and storing voting information which has the potential for change / manipulation with the help of a simple spurious software. In addition, there is nothing currently in the system (election process) which can ensure the integrity of EVMs, including that of the information on voting entered and stored inside the EVMs and the results based on it. Furthermore, there don't seem to be any hardcopy records of votes cast on EVMs available currently, such as paper ballots, which could be used during recount to verify EVM results.

Seva Lamberdar wrote:People need to remember something important about the nature and performance of EVMs before taking the results from them for granted.  These days even the most secure military, financial and Govt. sites are regularly infiltrated and the information from their computers, machines and data banks stolen, altered or destroyed. So what to speak of simple EVMs used for entering and storing voting information which has the potential for change / manipulation with the help of a simple spurious software. In addition, there is nothing currently in the system (election process) which can ensure the integrity of EVMs, including that of the information on voting entered and stored inside the EVMs and the results based on it. Furthermore, there don't seem to be any hardcopy records of votes cast on EVMs available currently, such as paper ballots, which could be used during recount to verify EVM results.

Sir, the fact that you had nothing to complain of EVMs when Modiji has been on a roll winning India's general election, in Maha, Andhra and Haryana, gives it all away.