A heated political debate has broken out in India in response to a recent tweet from Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire founder of SpaceX and Tesla, advocating for the removal of electronic voting machines (EVMs) over fears of them being manipulated by AI or humans.
In a tweet posted by Musk last Saturday, he said, “We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high.” Musk was “quote-tweeting” a post of Robert Kennedy Junior, an independent candidate for the upcoming US presidential polls, where he mentioned EVM-related irregularities in the recently held elections in Puerto Rico, a country located in the Caribbean Islands.
The tweet posted by Musk created a political storm in another democracy in South Asia, i.e. India which also witnessed recent general elections. India had deployed over 3 million EVMs for over 642 million voters who chose members of parliament (MPs) for 543 constituencies.
Rajiv Chandrasekhar, a former Minister of State for Electronics and IT, contested Musk’s assertion on EVM, and said, “This is a huge sweeping generalization that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong.”
Chandrasekhar highlighted that Musk’s concerns about electronic voting systems may be valid for the U.S. and other regions using regular computing platforms with internet connectivity. However, he claimed that India’s Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are fundamentally different.
As per Chandrasekhar, Indian EVMs are custom-designed, highly secure, and completely isolated from any network or media, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and the Internet, making them impervious to external interference. These machines use factory-programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed, ensuring their integrity.
He also suggested, “Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We wud be happy to run a tutorial, Elon.” Musk also replied to him, “Anything can be hacked.”
As the debate continued, Chandrasekhar replied to Musk, acknowledging the theoretical possibilities of hacking with advanced technologies like quantum computing and lab-level resources, which could compromise any digital system, including encrypted data and sophisticated flight controls.
However, Chandrasekhar, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), stressed, that it is “a different type of a conversation from EVMs being secure and reliable vis a vis paper voting. And we can agree to disagree.”
Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress, and the chief opposition party, participated in this discussion as well and questioned the accuracy of the EVMs. He referred to the EVM as the “black box” and stated that it is not authorized to examine them. Gandhi referred to recent news where a cell phone belonging to an election candidate’s relative was used to connect to a single EVM present in a booth in Mumbai during the counting process.
Rahul Gandhi emphasized, “Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability.”
During the election in India, OpenAI has reported several attempts to sway the elections through misinformation campaigns using AI. In addition, Microsoft has issued a warning about potential AI-generated interference by China and North Korea for the US, South Korea, and India, following a trial during Taiwan’s presidential poll.
As per the report, OpenAI disclosed blocking five covert attempts to spread misinformation online, including by an Israeli firm, STOIC. STOIC allegedly generated negative comments against India’s ruling BJP and promoted the opposition Congress party during the elections using ChatGPT.
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