The State election authorities are reportedly examining a proposal to request the Election Commission to allow counting of VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail) slips in the constituencies where the difference of votes between the winning and runner-up candidates is less than 500. Returning officers concerned could exercise their discretionary powers on whether or not to count the VVPAT slips in constituencies where the difference is less than 1,000 votes. Officials concerned are learnt to have taken a positive view on the requests submitted by some political parties in this regard.
Mandatory verification
They are learnt to have favoured that the mandatory verification of VVPAT slips should be taken up in two polling stations per constituency in place of one besides taking up counting in two polling stations as suggested by the runner-up candidates.
The election authorities reportedly summarised their experiences after the deployment of VVPATs in the elections for the first time.
The failure rate of VVPATs during mock poll done after first level checking in some districts was around 10%. The experience with the electronic voting machines was positive, but the higher failure of VVPATs has been a cause of concern.
Replacement
The figures for replacement of VVPATs was 3.7% as compared to 1.4% in case of ballot units (BUs) and 0.9% in case of control units (CUs). In all, 949 BUs, 785 CUs and 2,049 VVPATs failed during the mock poll/poll while the competency of the engineers deployed to resolve these issues was not up to the EC standards.
Control units
There were problems with the control units that got clock error problem at the time of candidate setting with 1,377 units turning defective during the recent election. Another issue that needed to be resolved was the automatically changing status of the EVMs and VVPATs in the Genesys portal while errors occurred frequently in EVM Tracking System (ETS).