Representative image of EVM's with VVPAT.
Credit: PTI Photo
The voters of Haryana are all set to go to the polling booth on October 5. Elections to 90 seats in the Haryana Assembly will be held in a single phase.
The results will be declared on October 8.
The ruling BJP is eyeing a hat-trick in the Assembly polls, but this time faces a stiff challenge from a resurgent Congress, which is looking to cash in on the anti-incumbency factor.
The Aam Aadmi Party is also contesting all 90 seats in Haryana after talks with the Congress over a seat-share agreement broke down.
AAP received a shot in the arm when it was announced that its party supremo Arvind Kejriwal, who is out on bail, will join the party's campaign.
It goes without saying that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) are being used to conduct elections.
How it works
An EVM is a device that allows voters to caste their votes using electronic means. According to the ECI, it assists in or oversees the casting and counting of votes. An EVM is made of two parts: the control unit and the balloting unit.
Voters can use the VVPAT machine to verify if their votes were cast as intended by using a verification technique. A VVPAT prints a paper slip with the name, party symbol, and serial number of the candidate a voter selects. Election fraud and malfunctions are intended to be identified by VVPATs.
To ensure safety and transparency, the ECI has advised officials to match data from EVMs and VVPATs.
What happens if they do not match
Should there be a disparity between the data on VVPATs and EVMs, the polling station's specific paper slips are re-examined. The count determined by the VVPAT paper slips takes precedence over the vote count recorded on the EVMs if the disparity continues.