On Sunday, BJP leader and former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar firmly countered tech mogul Elon Musk’s call to eliminate electronic voting machines (EVMs). Musk had ignited a debate over EVM security, suggesting their elimination due to potential hacking risks by humans or artificial intelligence.
“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Musk posted on X, responding to American politician and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s concerns about EVM issues in Puerto Rico’s recent primary elections.
Chandrasekhar, who previously served as the Minister of State for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, dismissed Musk’s claim as an overly broad generalization that overlooks the feasibility of creating secure digital hardware.
“This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong,” Chandrasekhar wrote.
The BJP leader pointed out that while Musk’s concerns might be relevant to countries where voting machines are built with standard computing platforms and Internet connectivity, they do not apply to India.
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“Indian EVMs are custom designed, secure, and isolated from any network or media – no connectivity, no Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Internet. There is no way in. They use factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed.”
Chandrasekhar also offered to demonstrate how to design and build secure electronic voting machines properly. “Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right, as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial, Elon.”
Kennedy, who is running for the US presidential election as an independent candidate, had cited an Associated Press report on “hundreds of voting irregularities” and emphasized the need for a paper trail to identify and correct such issues.
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