Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a former Union Minister, took strong objection to the recent statements by Elon Musk with respect to electronic voting machines or EVMs. Musk opined that EVMs should be totally avoided because humans or AI could hack them too. The Former Minister replied in a tweet saying that Musk had made a "huge sweeping generalisation" and invited him to come and learn how EVMs in India were made.
Then, Chandrasekhar said, Musk's opinion, of course, pertains to countries who've been using internet-connected voting machines built on standard computing platforms, citing instances of what's already happened in the primary elections by Puerto Rico. But he explained that Indian EVMs were specifically designed as stand-alone systems for security reasons, though totally devoid of networks or external media.
“Risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Chandrasekhar said this is not the case at all.
“This is a huge sweeping generalisation statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong,” replied the former minister. He invited Musk to come to India to learn about the robustness and security features of Indian EVMs as he stated that Indian EVMs have a correct architecture.
“No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet; there is no way in. Factory-programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed,” informed the former minister.
“Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial, Elon,” Chandrasekhar added.
With confidence in Indian EVMs, in a rejoinder, Chandrasekhar said Musk cannot be right that such systems are necessarily prone to manipulation.
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