BJP out!

[trochee]

Hurrah! The until-today-ruling (and reactionary nationalist conservative) Indian BJP party overestimated their popularity and called elections early -- and lost.

Also check the comparison of their electronic voting to the Diebold systems, from boingboing_net.

Diebold system works on Microsoft software, it has no seals on locks and panels to detect a tempering. It has a keyboard interface (!!!) and the server was tested to have “Blaster” virus. One report on Wired says a lady stumbled upon some files from Diebold, and found that the votes were stored in MS Access files. It also has a PCMCIA SanDisk card for local storage. A touchscreen GUI and a network connection to send the results to a server after encrypting it with DES.

The Indian EVM is just plain circuit, with some assembly code. A few LEDs, and two Seven Segment LED displays. One EVM can list 16 candidates, but up to 4 EVMs can be Linked to accommodate 64 candidates. (In a country of a billion people its possible to have 64 candidates for one single constituency.)

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

(In a country of a billion people its possible to have 64 candidates for one single constituency.)

I don't understand the connection there. I could see how large constituencies would result in many candidates, and I can certainly see that some electoral systems would result in many candidates (although I thought that India was first-past-the-post), but not how having many people overall causes many candidates for a constituency.

I suppose perhaps having many people might cause it, as long as the overall number of constituencies was kept proportionately low (if, say, there were only a few hundred across the whole country). But that's not a necessary result of having a billion people.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I agree -- I think that "constituency" must mean something like "country" here. But I'm also curious about how that could result in more candidates.

Then again, parliamentary systems make it more reasonable to have many parties. But you'd expect that in local districts, it would still be a winner-take-all situation, which encourages a two-party system. Hmm....

[moretea.livejournal.com]

bjp = scary.

i agree this is a good thing.