Paper trail system in Palair

Khammam: Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) system will be implemented in all 243 polling booths in the Palair Assembly constituency. The Election Commission has organised a live demonstration for the polling staff on using VVPAT system in electronic voting machines (EVMs).  

A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results. It offers some fundamental differences as a paper, rather than computer memory, recording medium when storing votes. Congress and Telugu Desam suspected the tampering of EVMs in GHMC and Warangal Lok Sabha elections. They approached Election Commission on introducing of VVPATs in the Palair byelection.

A paper VVPAT can be read by the human eye and voters can directly interpret their vote. Computer memory requires a device and software which potentially is proprietary. The election officials used the VVPAT machines in 40 polling stations in the recently held Khammam Municipal Corporation elections.

Insecure voting machine records could potentially be changed quickly without detection by the voting machine itself. It would be more difficult for voting machines to corrupt records without human intervention. Corrupt or malfunctioning voting machines might store votes other than as intended by the voter unnoticed. VVPAT allows voters the possibility to verify that their votes are cast as intended.