Trust, transparency, and the ballot paper: Karnataka’s message to the nation

The Karnataka Governor has approved the Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj (Amendment) Act, which provides for the use of ballot papers instead of electronic voting machines in the state’s gram panchayat, taluk, and district panchayat elections.

The Karnataka decision is not merely an administrative change; it is a clear response to serious questions that have been raised over the years about the reliability of the EVM system. Distrust of the EVM system is not isolated; it is a concern that has arisen across the country. These doubts were reinforced by the unexplained increase in voting percentages in Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jammu and Kashmir.

The allegations raised in the 2024 Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections are even more serious. As economist Parakala Prabhakar has pointed out, the figures show that about 17 lakh votes were cast between 11:45 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. The Election Commission has yet to satisfactorily explain how the voting percentage rose from 68.04% to 81.79% hours after the polls closed.

Similar concerns have been raised in Kerala too. Although the Assembly elections were held on April 9, 2026, detailed booth-wise voting figures have still not been made available. The Election Commission says that accurate information will be released only after the counting of votes. The reality is that such information is often not released in a timely manner, which creates doubts.

In Karnataka, in 2023, senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that the names of Congress supporters were wrongly deleted from the voter list in the Aland Assembly constituency. Non-transparent electronic systems weaken the very foundation of democracy.

The country has not forgotten the shocking facts revealed by RTI activist Manoranjan Roy through a public-interest litigation filed in the Bombay High Court. There was reportedly a discrepancy of about 20 lakh machines between the number of EVMs distributed by the manufacturers—Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) of Bengaluru and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) of Hyderabad—and the number recorded by the Election Commission as received. While BEL alone claimed to have distributed 19,69,932 machines, the Election Commission recorded only 10,05,662 machines.

The Election Commission dismissed this as a ‘misinterpretation’. The Supreme Court also dismissed similar petitions as ‘baseless’. But such a huge discrepancy has still not been explained, according to official documents obtained under the RTI Act.

If even the number of devices used in the democratic process is unclear, how can people have full faith in the electoral system?

The Election Commission has repeatedly said that EVMs are stand-alone, isolated from networks, and use a one-time programmable microcontroller. But technical security alone is not enough; security must be ensured at every stage of handling. The potential for misuse does not lie only in the chip inside the machine; it also lies in the processes surrounding it. There is a possibility of manipulation at any stage, including loading, transportation, storage, removal of mock poll data, and booth-level recording.

Many democracies still rely on paper ballots. In 2009, a court in Germany ruled that electronic voting was unconstitutional. The German court cited the democratic principle that the election process should be understandable to the average citizen as the reason for its decision.

The Netherlands banned electronic voting machines in 2007, saying they were unsafe. Ireland also abandoned electronic voting in 2010. Finland, Norway, and Kazakhstan have all abandoned EVMs. In the 2024 US elections, 98% of votes were backed by paper records. The world had already recognised that an auditable system is the soul of democracy.

The Karnataka government has now fulfilled its democratic responsibility by bringing in an amendment to the law. As Rural Development Minister Priyank Kharge pointed out, EVMs are being tested through legally sanctioned hacking experiments aimed at identifying security flaws in the systems. The suggestion to the Election Commission to conduct an “Ethical Hackathon” did not even receive a response. When the demand for transparency was denied, the Karnataka state government acted on its own.

The BJP criticised this as a return to the Stone Age. However, when technology is used, public trust is essential. There is little point in describing it as either progress or backwardness. The foundation of democracy is trust. If that trust is lost, technological efficiency becomes meaningless.

The time has come to make ballot papers mandatory in all elections in India—Lok Sabha, state legislative assemblies, and panchayats. In a large and diverse democracy like India, election results must not only be accurate, but those who lose must also be able to believe that the results are credible. Today’s controversies show that the EVM system is repeatedly failing this test of public trust. Therefore, Karnataka’s move is both a warning and an example.