Indian elections

With the Indian elections due to start tomorrow, there's some news coverage of the country's voting machines and reactions to them.

Some 675m voters are expected to visit the polling stations over a three-week period. Apparently there are more than one million machines in place in 700,000 polling stations, with 15-20% "expected to fail".

BBC Radio 4 this afternoon reported from villages where the local population does not yet have electricity, let alone digital technology. Some voters quoted by Radio 4 said they wanted to vote, but didn't know how.

One Indian commentator, Dr Leo Rebello of the All India Voter Panchayat, said the system had been introduced too quickly, the electorate were not prepared and have not been shown how to use the machines, and called the system "a recipe for corruption". Another stated "we have no faith in these voting machines".

Images of the voting machines can be seen in this slide series on the Election Commission of India website. The feature that allows permanent closure of the device "in the case of booth capture" is perhaps the most unusual. There's more information about the system on this EU site.

Bharat Electronics, one of the two manufacturers, now has its eyes set on other Asian countries, and US and European markets too, according to this Silicon India report. A company spokesman elsewhere describes the machines as "foolproof" and "mistake-proof". The machines do not have a voter-verifiable audit trail.