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  • India's Votegate? "Results" Before Voting in Lok Sabha 2009

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    The mystery of "results" before voting during the Lok Sabha 2009 elections in India - Is votegate the biggest yet fraud on India's democracy?

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    India's Votegate? “Results” before voting in Lok Sabha 2009

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    The mystery of "results" before voting during the Lok Sabha 2009 elections in India - Is votegate the biggest yet fraud on India's democracy?

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    247 views19 pages

    India's Votegate? "Results" Before Voting in Lok Sabha 2009

    Uploaded by

    Candidate Info
    The mystery of "results" before voting during the Lok Sabha 2009 elections in India - Is votegate the biggest yet fraud on India's democracy?

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)
    Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 19

    Indias VoteGate?

    Results before voting in Lok Sabha 2009

    Key Events

    April 2009:
    Dr Anupam Saraph, Prof Madhav Nalapat and others decide to track the elections and create a wiki for constituencies and candidates

    Constituency and candidate data


    sourced from the ECI website
    Candidate Wiki: http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Lok_sabha_Candidates Constituency Wiki: http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Lok_Sabha_Constituencies

    16

    Key Events

    April 2009: Election commission website allows download of candidate data as an excel spreadsheet

    th

    Spreadsheet contains candidate


    names, gender, address, party names, symbol, constituency information etc.

    Spreadsheet changes in subsequent


    downloads as candidates are added in different constituencies

    Key Events

    May 2009: Elections are still on and 10 days to go before the results

    th

    Spreadsheet downloaded on this day


    contains , gender, address, party names, symbol, constituency information etc. and coded candidate names and votes polled data

    Votes polled data in the spreadsheet


    changes even as elections are on

    Sample Record

    Field
    STATECODE STATENAME PCNO PCNAME PHASE CANDIDATESERIALNO NAME GENDER AGE CATEGORY PARTYSHORTNAME PARTYNAME

    16th April 2009


    S01 Andhra Pradesh 1 Adilabad 1 1 ADE TUKARAM M 55 ST BJP Bharatiya Janata Party

    6th May 2009


    S01 Andhra Pradesh 1 Adilabad 1 1 CANDIDATE_S01_1_1 M 55 ST BJP PartyName_569

    16th May 2009


    S01 Andhra Pradesh 1 Adilabad 1 1 ADE TUKARAM M 55 ST BJP Bharatiya Janata Party

    SYMBOLDESC
    VOTESPOLLED ADDRESS DECODE(FINALISED,'YES' ,'FINALISED','')

    Lotus

    Lotus
    122042

    Lotus

    H.No. 4-72 (11-115),Utnoor Village,Utnoor Mandal Adilabad District (AP) FINALISED

    H.No. 4-72 (11-115),Utnoor Village,Utnoor Mandal Adilabad District (AP) FINALISED

    H.No. 4-72 (11-115),Utnoor Village,Utnoor Mandal Adilabad District (AP) FINALISED

    Data files accessed from: http://eci.nic.in/candidateinfo/frmcandidate.aspx Data files archived at: http://www.scribd.com/collections/2319591/Candidate-Info

    Key Events

    May 2009: NIC and Elections Commission alerted to the election results available before voting has completed on their website

    th

    NIC responds in one hour confirming


    the observation and alerting the ECI to the grave observation

    No response from the ECI

    Key Events

    16

    May 2009: Elections are over and results declared


    contains candidate names, gender, address, party names, symbol, constituency information etc. just like th April 2009 16

    th

    Spreadsheet downloaded on this day

    There is no votes polled data for any


    candidate

    Key Events

    May 2009 onwards for a few months: The media and political leaders informed about the happening amidst shock and disbelief

    th

    EVM controversy broken out by some


    parties in June

    Parties study data, seek to be informed


    Media report: http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/jul/160709-Election-Commission-LokSabha-election-S-Y-Quraishi-Pune-Municipal-Corporation.htm

    Key Events

    25

    May 2009: The spreadsheet is no longer accessible on the ECI website other urls

    th

    Data of winning candidates declared on

    Key Events

    July 2009: The ECI asked again about the results on their website before voting

    th

    ECI does not respond


    Copy of letter to ECI posted on: http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Coded_data_on_ECI_website

    Key Events

    August 2009: Political parties lead representation to ECI along with technology experts

    th

    ECI holds in-camera meeting but fails to


    answer questions about results before voting

    Copy of minutes of meeting mailed to ECI: http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Minutes_mailed_to_ECI

    Summary of Events

    Date April 2009 10th April 2009

    16th and 24th April 2009

    6th, 7th, 11th and 15th May 2009 6th, 7th, 11th and 15th May 2009

    16th, 19th, 20th and 22nd May 2009 23rd May 2009 25th May 2009 7th August 2009

    Event Group decides to create wiki for candidates and constituencies No Data available; request made to NIC for data in excel format Excel file made available at http://eci.nic.in/candidateinfo/frmcandidate.as px Files downloaded in this period have candidate names, party names All files downloaded in this period have coded candidate names and votes polled data Votes Polled data in files downloaded is different for some candidates Candidate files downloaded in this period are no longer coded are similar to those before the 6th of May and have no votes polled data when it should have been there The ECI Site is down The Site is restored but the Candidate file is made inaccessible In-camera meeting at ECI, ECI fails to explain events

    What could have caused results to

    Hypothesis

    appear on the ECI website before voting?

    H1: ECI website was hacked H2: Someone was experimenting with
    dummy data in the database on the ECI servers

    H3: Someone uploaded desired


    results on the ECI servers

    Hypothesis

    Possibilities

    Implications

    H1: ECI Website Hacked

    ECI security seriously compromised

    Questions When was the last security audit done? What forensic study was undertaken? Is a new security regime in place?

    Hypothesis

    Possibilities

    Implications

    H2: ECI Website posted dummy data

    ECI procedures seriously compromised

    Questions Why was it not removed after the NIC and ECI were intimated on the 6th May 2009? Why is there no explanation from ECI to date? Why was the dummy data coded? Why did the votes polled data change? Why does the field DECODE(FINALISED,'YE S','FINALISED','') change over time? Why was real data not uploaded on the 16th May 2009?

    Hypothesis

    Possibilities

    Implications

    H3: ECI website had real coded data

    Free and fair elections did not happen, the 2009 Election was hijacked

    Questions Was the EVM read ahead of time into ECI Database? Was the ECI Database written to EVMs? How do the EVMs transfer or receive data? What audit of votes recorded by the EVM is possible? What forensic analysis of the EVMs/servers has been done?

    Forensics Needed

    Possibilities

    Firewall and Application/Webserver logs

    Data Changes in the CandidateAC file IP addresses that downloaded the files IP addresses that uploaded the files

    Implications Verify the CandidateAC files Verify the access to these files from various locations

    Webserver archives

    CandidateAC files Programs with access to the CandidateAC files

    Demonstrate the versions of the CandidateAC files List the ways this file could be viewed or modified

    EVM Analysis

    For each booth the serial no, make and version of EVMs deployed and results read on them Features of each version of EVM

    Explore correlation between EVM and surprise results Establish known capability of EVM

    Reforms Needed

    Reforms needed: Receipts for voters Third party audit of elections Multiple EVM channels including
    internet and mobile phones

    Safeguarding Democracy: http://www.slideshare.net/AnupamSaraph/safeguarding-democracy Election Reforms: http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/15844.pdf

    Category

    Link

    References

    News

    http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/jul/160709-Election-Commission-LokSabha-election-S-Y-Quraishi-Pune-Municipal-Corporation.htm

    Data

    http://www.scribd.com/collections/2319591/Candidate-Info

    Wiki Links

    Tracking the elections Questions about Indian democracy raised by the data on the ECI website Voting Reforms: Options in an imperfect world Copy of letter sent to the ECI requesting clarifications Researching the coded database Case for Election Reforms Review the 2009 Lok Sabha Election Process: Promises and Reality Results before Voting? EVM Issues Results before voting Requirements form the ECI Minutes of meeting with the ECI mailed to them

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