Anti-Satellite Missiles make us weak as a Planet

What happens within atmosphere should remain within atmosphere. When we have a whole atmosphere to war in, why take the fight to space? It is like two federal states of a country trying to settle their water disputes on the streets of another country. That said, it is not the mistake of the one who follows the other. Rather, it is the mistake of the one who started it.

We don't want to look like a disunited planet to aliens do we? After all, within atmosphere, we fight as countries. But outside, we stand united as the earth itself. This should be the underlying tone of any future outer-space treaty.

Nationalism as a virtue may be a fine avocation for the 21st century. What we are going to need next is "Planetism".

Why VVPAT is technically not a proof enough for EVM?

There are two ways of looking at it-
1. Faith - we have faith in our strong institutions (in this case Election Commission of India).
2. Proof - we have technical proof that our institutions are strong.

I discuss the second point before discussing the first.

Proof-
      A proof that the vote that I intended to cast has been recorded as per my wish. For this, EC has come up with a solution of attaching VVPATs to EVMs. It suggests that since the button I had pressed on EVM corresponds to the candidate whose name & symbol are shown on VVPAT slip, it is proof enough that the actual vote that was registered in the EVM must be the same as I had intended.

     I have technical reservations in this line of argument. The moment I press the button, two things happen -
1. EVM registers my vote (But I'm not sure whether it has registered my vote as per my choice or not).
2. VVPAT prints out the slip that shows the details of the candidate I had voted for.

My qualms arise from the fact that it is possible to do multiple tasks with a single click of a computer button. It is further possible for those multiple tasks to either be dependent on each other or be completely independent. Now, how does a common man have the proof that the vote registered in EVM is the same as the candidate printed on VVPAT? Is it not possible to write a computer algorithm where, with a single click of a button, a vote is registered in the EVM for candidate B, while candidate A gets printed on VVPAT? I believe that is quite simple.

Does the algorithm that registers my vote in EVM take inputs from VVPAT or vice-versa or are they independent, doing two different things? When we are considering VVPAT slip as the proof of what happened in the EVM machine, we are only considering half the story. When we say, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating", VVPAT is pudding being eaten for sure, but it is only half the pudding. No one knows if even the other half is pudding (the vote registered in EVM) as well, unless he eats that half too.

The moment we are accepting VVPAT as a proof, we are simply trying to conflate "Proof" with "Faith".

If EC wants the citizens to have "Faith" in its moral uprightness, by all means I would have "Faith" in our honorable EC. But when EC has decided to give us the "proof" in the form of VVPAT, it has to also show that the same candidate also got registered in the EVM.

India is rich in computer science graduates. I'm sure any of them would know that what a computer user looks at the screen is not what happens inside the computer chip. Computer chip understands binary code but it converts those calculations into user readable interface using GUI. Hence, What You See Is Not What You Get, or simply, WYSINWYG in case of computers. Computer can also ask for input where the user enters 1+2, and computer calculates it as 3, but we can make it print 4 on the screen. Hence, EVM may register a vote for candidate B but show candidate A on the screen.

Most of the discussion surrounding the EVM has narrowly focused on tampering with EVM machines i.e., the problem of someone "tampering" with EVM machines and doing what EVMs never intended to. But what if even without tampering with it, the very algorithm that was supposed to run on EVMs did two mutually independent things that are not the same?

Faith -
Now coming to the first point i.e., matter of faith, I have nothing much to say except that VVPAT is not proof but it's the same as "no-VVPAT" or simply "Faith".

In case of paper ballots, there were no two independent things. There is only one paper slip. But now, there is a process going on in EVM that is independent of VVPAT. At the end of polling, we are only verifying VVPATs and not cross-verifying what is registered in the EVM along with the particular VVPAT slip.

Way forward-
        I'm sure there should be many other innovative possibilities to give the citizens of India, the "proof" they deserve - the proof that the vote that he had intended has actually been cast in the EVM. I have one suggestion to EC - "VVPAT random coding".

Along with name of the candidate and the symbol, there should be a random electronic chip generated unique code printed onto the VVPAT. The same code should also be recorded against the vote that was registered in EVM. When one verifies the VVPAT slips as per the random code printed on it, the EVM registry should also show the same party symbol and candidate's name. And to make the transparency complete, the complete EVM registry must be available online for every citizen in the country to see. A new entry would be made in the registry for every new vote being cast on the polling day.

Now that's what I call as "eating the pudding" or simply put, "the proof".

Each and every vote cast in the entire country should have a unique code printed. Hence, to put an end to the EVM-VVPAT tampering debate, and to have full confidence in the democratic processes of the largest democracy in the world, what is needed is not simply EVM-VVPAT, but EVM-VVPATURC where VVPATURC stands for VVPAT-Unique Random Code.