VVPAT makes elections vulnerable, says former IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan

Can the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used in India be hacked? The question had ruled the roost in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in May this year, only to be forgotten after the polls.

But it resurfaced on Tuesday with Kannan Gopinathan, the young IAS officer who quit civil service in August over lack of freedom and expression, pointing out the vulnerabilities in the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT).

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Gopinathan argued that VVPAT – a system in which voters can see on paper whether the machine has registered the same vote as the button they pressed – has created a hole in the EVMs and made the process amenable to hacking.

The VVPAT slip is visible to the voter for seven seconds before it falls into a box where it is stored for counting, if need be.

He described VVPAT's design, its functioning, the components, and how it can be manipulated to drive home his point.

“So, by introducing VVPATs, we have created so much vulnerability to an otherwise fool-proof process, while not adding adequate checks, either in the process or during the counting. I feel there is an urgent need to address this so that the process becomes more robust,” he tweeted.

Gopinathan told Onmanorama on Tuesday that he is not raising unsubstantiated allegations. "It is a concern because of the way we introduced VVPAT into the election process and the vulnerabililty that has come into it."

Gopinathan was a staunch supporter of EVMs when he was in service. In March 2017, he denounced prominent Indian analyst James Wilson for raising doubts about EVMs.

“If you know the process you would know why none of these questions on EVMs stick,” he had tweeted then.

On Tuesday, he said his first election with VVPAT had taken away his trust.

He also clarified why he did not raise the issue while being in the service. “I did raise it on two occasions. During the ECI training of returning officers at the IIIDEM, and later at the time of commissioning with ECIL. So now without attributing any mala fide, I would like to put my concerns out.”

He said all references and photos used in his tweets have been picked from the Election Commission of India's manual on EVMs and VVPAT.