News Brief
"Happy To Run Tutorial": Elon Musk Says 'Eliminate EVMs', Former BJP Minister Draws Contrast Between US And India
Nishtha Anushree
Jun 16, 2024, 12:38 PM | Updated 12:38 PM IST
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After Elon Musk talked about eliminating Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) quoting US President-candidate Rober F Kennedy Junior, former BJP Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar corrected him.
Citing an Associate Press report alleging discrepancies in EVMs, Musk said, "We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high."
Quoting Musk's post, the former Minister of State (MoS) for Electronics and Information Technology (IT) said, "This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong."
Chandrasekhar said, "Elon Musk's view may apply to the US and other places - where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet-connected Voting machines."
"But Indian EVMs are custom designed, secure and isolated from any network or media - No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet, there is no way in. Factory-programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed," he added.
"Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial, Elon," Chandrasekhar said.
Kennedy had said, "US citizens need to know that every one of their votes were counted and that their elections cannot be hacked. We need to return to paper ballots to avoid electronic interference with elections."
This was similar to what many Opposition leaders and supporters were claiming before the elections. The Supreme Court even heard a plea challenging EVMs before the Lok Sabha elections.
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Nishtha Anushree is Senior Sub-editor at Swarajya. She tweets at @nishthaanushree.
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