SHILLONG, July 19: The use of paper ballots for the presidential poll on Monday has made people wonder why the Election Commission of India prefers the allegedly prone-to-tampering electronic voting machines (EVMs) for the general elections.
An official of the Election department said the rules of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, have been changed and a Supreme Court ruling necessitated the switchover to EVMs due to the scale, nature and scope of general elections.
“A change in the Act may also allow the switch to EVMs for the presidential election,” he said.
EVMs were used for the first time in 50 polling stations of the Parur Assembly constituency in Kerala in 1982-83.
The following year, the Supreme Court suspended the use of EVMs until the Representation of the People (RP) Act was amended.
The RP Ac was amended in 1988 enabling the use of EVMs with effect from March 15, 1989.
In 2018, the Supreme Court had dismissed a petition seeking a return to the ballot paper.
Since 2000, EVMs have been used in four Lok Sabha elections and in 122 state elections. So far, 315-crore votes have been cast on EVMs.
Officials said the country cannot return to the paper ballots as an average of 2,000 invalid votes used to be cast in the pre-EVM era. He added that an EVM is designed to allow four votes per minute, thus ruling out vote stuffing unlike in the case of paper ballots.
“The counting of ballot papers was also prone to manual errors while the counting on EVM is quick and largely accurate,” an official said.
