Electoral officials demonstrate the usage of an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) to locals during a voter awareness programme ahead of Assembly elections.
Credit: PTI Photo
The assembly polls in Jharkhand will take place in two phases, on November 13 and 20. The results of the polls will be announced on November 23, alongside Maharashtra.
As we know, both the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) along with EVMs will be used at all the polling stations in the forthcoming Jharkhand Assembly elections. The officials match data from EVMs and VVPATs to ensure safety and transparency.
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.
On the other hand, 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.
The ECI has advised officials to match data from EVMs and VVPATs to ensure transparency. But what happens if they do not match?
If the data from the EVMs and VVPATs do not match, the paper slips of the particular polling station in question are recounted. If discrepancies persists, he count determined by the VVPAT paper slips takes precedence over the vote count recorded on the EVMs.