If it is computers there will always be doubts.

Ever since the Aam Aadmi Party, or AAP, came second behind the Congress in the assembly elections in Punjab and got no seats in Goa it has been screaming that the Electronic Voting Machines, or EVMs, had been tampered with. After the BJP won a sweeping victory in UP assembly polls, with 312 seats out of a total of 403, the Congress and Ms Mayawati joined AAP in alleging voter fraud by tampering with EVMs. Ms Mayawati's BSP was reduced to 19 from 80 seats in the previous assembly and the Congress dropped to 7 seats from 28. The biggest loser was the Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, whose party the SP, dropped from 224 to just 47. EVMs are standalone machines on which the names of candidates, name of the political party represented by the candidate, and the symbol of the party are printed from above downwards. There is a button against each name which is pressed by the voter according to the candidate she prefers. Right at the bottom is the NOTA button, which stands for 'None Of The Above'. These machines are manufactured by two public sector companies and are programmed to stop working if anyone tampers with them. A few days back Saurabh Bharadwaj demonstrated how he had hacked into an EVM, in front of the Delhi assembly. In response, the Election Commission said that this was a lookalike machine and not what they used. Voting machines have created problems in the US as well. In 2000, Al Gore lost the presidential election to George W Bush when his votes were rejected because of, what is known as, 'hanging chads'. In the US voting machines have been shown to be vulnerable to hacking. Given their thirst for research, professors in the US keep on trying to find ways of hacking voting machines all the time, even if threatened with law suits by the companies which manufacture them. To its credit the Election Commission has challenged politicians to try and hack their machines. Machines will be provided to parties for 7-10 days and they have to demonstrate how to hack them in front of experts. It is not whether the EVMs can be hacked. They have to be downloaded on to a computer where the votes will be counted and computers can easily be programmed to divert a certain number of votes to one party. It is astonishing that no one is talking about that. It is not just what is true, it is a question of perception. In the US Donald Trump is assumed to have won the election due to Russian interference. It is a canard floated by Britain's MI6 and grabbed eagerly by Trump's enemies to discredit his victory. No matter what his supporters say the perception is that he has something to hide. The problem is not with EVMs or the Election Commission, the problem is that people do not trust machines. So they will believe machines are deceiving them.