Proofs have been provided in lot of previous terror attacks like 26/11 Mumbai attack, Pathankot, Pulwama etc. What did Pakistan do with the proofs? Nothing.
Regarding Indian voting machines, there is also randomization involved at various levels during distribution making it difficult to game the system but still I always wonder if there is any way to hack the system. I hope people in charge have a process to continuously evaluate the security procedures and improve it.
I never understood the desire to have any kind of machine at all. Paper ballots are a perfectly efficient and scalable system used for many large elections. Even if complicated machines are theoretically safe against malfeasance, keeping it simple increases public confidence.
Scalable? Not for same-day. I'd be fine waiting a few days if needed, though. Heck, early voting means I wait for weeks now.
Ranked choice voting is essentially doing multiple elections at a time, having to recount portions of votes every time a candidate drops out. That's a lot easier with computers.
I think the totals from every precinct could be made public in a way that they are verifiable from a central database, where the numbers add up to the total for the state and eventually federal count.
This is probably already happening, but people don't seem to think so.
Same-day? It is not a problem at all. For example Finland calculates enough paper ballots in hours to give a definitive result, I am sure there are other countries that manage it as well. Your imagination is stuck in the world of voting practices of your side of the pond.
In the case of India, keep in mind that the country still has a significant illiteracy rate (about 20% as of 2018) and plenty of people who have literally never used a paper form in their lives. One of the key design goals of the machines is to try and reduce the education needed as much as possible while still keeping things more private and efficient than voice votes.
I should say, the speed of tabulation. An American election can include ballot lines for president, senator, member of congress, state senator, three state representatives, a county councilmember or two, a member of the board of education etc.
If the speed of tabulation is the main reason then why are results no longer known by election night? They're saying it might be days again. When we had paper ballots, we knew that night. (For America)
>When we had paper ballots, we knew that night. (For America)
You forgot about 2000. Also, the main reason for the delays are mail-in ballots, which could be delayed for days/weeks, depending on how lenient the deadlines are.
More bits of paper. The ballot papers around here are bloated oversize monstrosities (picture A3 sized) due to the number of parties and candidates but you get a separate one for each election. Unfortunately not every area is paper only.
Here we don't even put names on the ballot, instead there is number assigned for each, this scales up to hundreds of candidates. This does prevent write ins, but I see no reason why you could not have own ballot for each purpose and then say colour code them and append letter or two in front of each candidate for each election.
We need results in as short a time as possible, ws have about 100 crore registered voters, of whom about 70% on average vote, meaning that the ECI must process 70 Crore votes, in under 10 hours.
Making that happen in a free and fair way is a logistical challenge, one that we undertake every 5 years.
One more large advantage of EVMs is making booth capture very expensive (because EVMs have a inbuilt rate limit, but a ballot box does not).
At any rate, with VVPAT being there, it adds another layer of security.
Tell me you're under 24 years old without telling me you're under 24 years old.
The US 2000 election was a fiasco of the failures of paper ballots. Officials spent weeks scrutinizing ballots and to this day nobody thinks they got it correct to within the margin of error.
That's when electronic machines came in. They are not necessarily better, but nobody who lived through that nightmare thinks fondly of the clarity of paper ballots.
> They are not necessarily better, but nobody who lived through that nightmare thinks fondly of the clarity of paper ballots.
I lived through that, it wasn't that big a deal, and I still think fondly of the clarity of paper ballots. No system is perfect, but paper ballots work and work well.
Don't say that to a CISF guy. They get really mad. I once interned at a national lab and there was a snafu due to which I couldn't get in. So I had to call my advisor from the main entrance, and I told him that the watchman isn't letting me in. The security guy overheard it and threw a fit about how he isn't a watchman but a central gov. employee.
Absolutely. In Indian hierarchy one can blast watchmen for not doing their work properly and CISF can blast a passenger for not doing their work properly. So they are indeed powerful. One can see that in their swagger. They are there to serve government not the passengers.
> Before I would have said we have plenty more to do before A.I takes over. And a.i ( Assisted Intelligence ) would aid those creative process.
My guess is in the short term it will still be assisted intelligence except that it will be humans assisting AI models as in humans in the loop correcting minor mistakes in the model generated video frames.
The most incredible thing about UPI is how it was embraced by even the poorest in the remote corners of India. One of the former finance ministers of India talked in a dismissive tone in the parliament about rural India adopting digital payments when the current government announced "Digital India" plan. Some one made a meme video out of it mocking him.
Super affordable smartphones and cheap and fast 4G data, great apps like GPay and PhonePe with lots of gamification and cashbacks and ubiquitous merchant acceptance through apps like PayTM, PhonePe and GPay were key drivers for this.
Then, demonetization and covid were accelerants to achieve critical mass. Post 2022, its been unstoppable.
Cash is a less than optimally efficient part of the current economic systems, not unlike credit cards are The logical conclusion of technological development in this area would be something like a micro hardware security key storing blockchain wallet keys implanted inside your hand, activated by your thoughts or a certain movement or something, at least as far as I guess.
There are 5 parties in UPI (or any payment system really):
1. bank customers, 2. bank, 3. payment network, 4. 3rdparty apps (TPAPs) 5. merchants.
UPI is free for #1. It costs #2, #3, #4 to build and operate the systems. So, #5 pays for accepting payments in UPI. But what they pay is far less than what it costs them to accept payments via other means including cash. Also, #2 pays somewhat because it is a service their customer values. Banks also like it because the network fees are far cheaper than other networks like Mastercard and Visa.
Naively someone might think paying and accepting in cash is free. But reality is cash handling can get expensive – leakages (cashier steals), counting and tallying cash, time lost in going to bank branch to deposit cash, dealing with providing exact change etc. are all expensive once you see how convenient and highly productive digital payments is.
There is a geopolitics angle to this. US has been making noise about upcoming election in Bangladesh being "free and fair". US has even announced some visa policy to promote "democratic elections" in Bangladesh. US has been pursuing a military base in Bangladesh. The current government has been resisting the pressure. According to a report, India has conveyed to US its concerns about what it perceives as US interference in Bangladesh elections.
> She blames the antibiotics for altering her children’s gut microbiome and herself for agreeing to the treatment in the first place.
My son had to be administered antibiotics within an hour of being born. He later developed allergies to a wide range of nuts. I don't know if they are related but I always wonder about the connection.
Hope you read the article to the end; I’m sure most people would rather have an allergic kid than no kid at all, which is what antibiotics used correctly enable. Of course one should avoid antibiotics for useless reasons and viral infections but I hope that was obvious even before the allergy discussion.
A sharp increase in nut allergies was seen when pregnant women were advised to avoid nuts, just in case. It actually caused more allergies because the fetus wasn't exposed to small amounts and so never learned to not overreact.
What makes you think India hasn't been investing in railway safety? While the recent accident was unfortunate, number of railway accidents have been decreasing over years. Here is an infographic:
