Context

• The Election Commission of India has told the Supreme Court the 100 per cent verification of VVPAT slips in EVMs was a ‘regressive thought’, and would mean reverting back to the old paper ballot system.

Introduction of VVPAT: Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail

• About VVPAT: It is an independent system that consists of two parts, namely, a VVPAT Printer and VVPAT Status Display Unit (VSDU) attached to the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), that allow the voters to verify that their votes are cast as intended.
  • When a vote is cast, a slip is printed containing the serial number, name, and symbol of the candidate and remains exposed through a transparent window for 7 seconds.

Problems Associated with EVM and VVPAT

• Potential Vulnerabilities: The use of VVPATs has introduced potential vulnerabilities that did not exist with the standalone nature of EVMs and the technical and administrative safeguards that undergirded the legacy system. 
• Few Mismatch: The sample counting of VVPATs, across both the general election in 2019 and several other Assembly election have shown that the mismatch between the VVPAT recount and the EVM count has been minuscule.
• Critics Still Exist: The provision of Counting VVPAT tallies from five random polling booths in every Assembly constituency to be matched with the EVM vote-count, have not eased critics of the use of EVMs in Indian elections.
• • Despite pronouncements about malpractices and EVM-hacking, there has been no proof of any actual tampering of EVMs so far.  

Suggestions to Make VVPAT More Transparent

• Machine Audit: A machine audit trail of all the commands that are executed is maintained in the system, beyond just the votes recorded in the EVM’s ballot unit and the printed slips in the VVPATs, allowing for an audit to rule out any malicious code. 
• Upgrading Existing Machines: This could indeed make the system more robust and be considered as an upgrade to the existing machines.
• Ensure Complete Transparency: 100% recount of all VVPATs would suffice, instead of the current method of sampling the number of recounts, in order to have full transparency. 
• Increase in Recounting Samples: An increase in the recount sample to make it more statistically significant, by making the selected number of Assemblies specific to each State/Union Territory based on the size of the province.
  • Increase the recount sample in seats where the margin of victory is narrow (say, less than 1% of the overall votes).

Conclusion

The well-functioning VVPAT are required to alleviate concerns of EVM tampering. The EC should take proactive steps to remedy the concerns with VVPAT. The Indian Constitution empowers the Election Commission to conduct free and fair elections