#thoughtsonEVM — Who are the adversaries?

While reading Dr. Shukla’s book, it was quite clear that the election commission designed the EVMs to protect against the threats our elections faces from the 60s to the 80s, which included booth capturing, ballot stuffing and other activities conducted by political parties (or their hired guns) participating in the elections.

To that end, the EVM has been a remarkable success. The only time we heard instances of booth capturing was in the recent West Bengal panchayat elections, and it’s telling that paper ballots were used in those elections.

However, I do believe we have 2 other adversaries we need to worry about:

• An autocratic central government with near complete control over state machinery
• A well-funded, motivated foreign actor (state or non-state), willing to invest a lot of resources to undermine our elections

So, the real questions we need to ask are: “is there an imminant threat to our elections from either actors” and “If yes, can our elections be protected from these threat actors?”. For now, my answer is “I don’t know”