Elections: all votes are not counted

Thiruvananthapuram: All the voters who cast their votes in elections do not get their votes counted. This was the situation since electronic voting machines replaced paper based ballot boxes.

More than 7000 votes could not be counted in the last Lok Sabha elections in Kerala because of malfunctioning of Electronic Voting machines at the time of counting.

Detailed results released by Chief Electoral Office following an RTI query in 2014 showed that votes could not be retrieved from one or more electronic voting machines in nine of the 20 constituencies in the State.

The largest number of votes could not be retrieved in Pathanamthitta constituency (1610) followed by Kannur (1145).

The lowest was in Kollam where one voting machine malfunctioned after one vote was cast, and vote could not be retrieved during counting. In fact, many such cases had occurred during the Assembly elections in 2006. There were also cases where the votes could not be retrieved during counting. Thus constituencies such as Manjeswar, Kasaragod, Taliparamba, Irrikur, Manjeri and Kodakara had uncounted votes ranging from nearly 500 to 846.

The authorities did not mind that as results could be declared if the margins exceeded the number of votes that could not be retrieved. The only problem was that the choice of voters, whose votes could not be retrieved, will not get reflected in the votes polled by candidates.

In the Lok Sabha elections, 2009, as many as 1998 votes could not be retrieved. In the 2011 Assembly elections, the total number of votes that could not be retrieved dropped to 1767 only to go up substantially in 2014.

But worst was to follow. In the civic elections last year, several hundred voting machines malfunctioned, especially in Malappuram and Thrissur districts and repoll had to be ordered in 114 polling booths.

The State Election Commission ordered a fact finding enquiry by a technical committee. The Commission had purchased 37551 electronic voting machines from the Electronics Corporation of India. The committee found that the first lot of 20000 units supplied failed intermittently owing to manufacturing defects. The units short-circuited under humid conditions because of a design defect combined with poor insulation.