Eliminate electronic voting machines: Elon Musk highlights risk of tampering

New Delhi: Tesla and SpaceX Chief Elon Musk joined the conversations on the security of electronic voting machines pointing out that the risk of EVMs getting hacked cannot be ruled out.

Musk made the remarks amid increasing concerns worldwide after allegations of irregularities in Puerto Rico's recent primary elections, NDTV reported.

"We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high," Musk reportedly posted on X.

When the primary elections in Puerto Rico was mired in controversies over irregularities related to EVMs, a paper trail allowed election officials to identify and correct vote tallies.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew of former US President John F Kennedy and an independent hopeful for the 2024 US Elections brought EVM irregularities in Puerto Rico to fore and Musk was responding to it.

Robert F Kennedy Jr wrote: "Puerto Rico's primary elections just experienced hundreds of voting irregularities related to electronic voting machines, according to the Associated Press. Luckily, there was a paper trail so the problem was identified and vote tallies corrected. What happens in jurisdictions where there is no paper trail?"

Kennedy Jr, calling for ensuring elections secure, advocated the return of paper ballots.

Even as concerns over the security of EVMs are rife in the US, India uses tamper-proof third generation EVMS called, M3 EVMs.

These machines can switch to a ‘safety Mode’ becoming inoperable in the event of any attempt to tamper with them.

A team of professors belonging to three Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) helped upgrade Indian EVMs.

Alongside, an eminent Technical Expert Committee (TEC) on EVMs, which ensures the devices are secure, is in the service of Election Commission of India (ECI).

"Indian EVMs are different from other EVMs in the world. The M3 EVMs have no connection to any other device, not even mains power supply," NDTV quoted Professor Dinesh K Sharma from IIT Bombay as saying.

Earlier, a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta declined the plea seeking the 100 per cent cross-verification of votes cast on EVMs through paper slips generated by Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) allowing to verify only five randomly selected EVMs per Assembly constituency.