Manish Tewari calls For Paper Ballots: “EVMs Are Machines Not God..It Can Be Rigged, Hacked And Interdicted With”.
Congress MP Manish Tewari calls to opt out EVM with paper ballots for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. He remarked the democracy to be too precious to be left for the mercy of technology.
While speaking to news agency ANI, Mr. Tewari stated that, “Democracy is too precious to be left to technology. The question is not that EVMs are manipulated. The question is that EVMs can be manipulated”.
Taking to X, (formerly twitter), he said that as the Electronic machine would be a “machine” and it is not God, by the end of the day, it can be hacked and played around. Which according to Mr. Tiwari is the enough reason to resort to paper ballot.
He also raised the question of ECISVEEP”s (a flagship programme of Election Commission of India for promoting voter literacy in India) paternalism about Electronic Voting Machines.
Mr. Tewari take a dig at ECISVEEP”s response to a RTI in Lok Sabha regarding the source code of the EVM. He said, “It is quixotic that the owners of the machines affirm they do not know the source code of the machines they deploy but yet vouch for their integrity”.
The Congress MP also called for the INDIA alliance to bring back paper ballot for the 2024 Lok Sabha election in its agenda. He further stated that “many countries including those invented EVMs have gone back to paper ballots for they are indeed unreliable and prone to the perception that they can be fixed”.
Fundamental question is not that EVM’s are rigged. It is that EVM’s can be rigged.
That is reason enough to go back to paper ballots.
Democracy is too vital to be left to the vagaries of Technology.
EVM is after all a machine it is not God. Of course it can be rigged, hacked &…— Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) September 23, 2023
Meanwhile on Friday, Supreme Court has declined a writ by Sunil Ahya, seeking for an independent audit for the source code governing the EVM, as the source codes are the “brain of an electronic system”.
But the Supreme Court stated that the Election Commission of India was constitutionally entrusted with the superintendence and controlling of the election poll and declined the writ.
