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.

[moretea.livejournal.com]

bjp = scary.

i agree this is a good thing.