Talk:Electronic voting in India

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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:24, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

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GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Electronic voting in India/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Magentic Manifestations (talk · contribs) 04:48, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Sohom Datta (talk · contribs) 07:12, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Will take a stab at this later this week. Sohom (talk) 07:12, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta Thanks for taking up the review. Let me know in case of comments/clarifications which I will then address accordingly. Magentic Manifestations (talk) 05:38, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta It has been more than ten days since you expressed your intention to review this but there has been little progress. Let me know if you are still intending to take this up. Thanks! Magentic Manifestations (talk) 10:19, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Taking a look. Sohom (talk) 15:16, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Review

Okay, after taking a look, I'm not enthused by the state of some parts of the article. Particularly, the "Reliability" section seems to suffer from a severe lack of NPOV WP:GACR#4 and sufficiently reliable sources backing up the content WP:GACR#2b. That section is supposed to discuss the susceptibility of the EVMs to attack and contextualize the claims of the election comission wrt to academic coverage of the situation. However, the reliability section does non of that, instead relying on a bunch of glorified press-releases from the Election Commission where they rubbish all the claims of other hackers, politicians and experts. The only piece of academic research is grossly misrepresented, the conclusion of the research paper by Alex Halderman et al. states Despite elaborate safeguards, India’s EVMs are vulnerable to serious attacks. Dishonest insiders or other criminals with physical access to the machines can insert malicious hardware that can steal votes for the lifetime of the machines. Attackers with physical access between voting and counting can arbitrarily change vote totals and can learn which candidate each voter selected. None of this is mentioned in the article, instead, a rosy picture is painted In April 2010, ... suggested moving to a voting system that provides greater transparency such as paper ballots, precinct count optical scan, or a voter verified paper audit trail for skeptical voters to observe the physical counting process to gain confidence that the outcome is fair.". The 2017 DEFCON event where multiple EVMs were puportedly broken is not mentioned at all, as is the more recent London hackathon incident. No mention is also given to the fact that one of the colaborators of the 2010 research was jailed for conducting the research.

Besides this, the "Usage" section relies too much on the first-party sources from the Election Commission (which is mostly fine, except that claims of security and safety are being made in the same section, which need to be verified by 3p sources). There is a general over-reliance on reporting from Times Of India (and Economic Times) sources, both of which are known to have a bais towards reporting positive things about the Indian government.

Based on the the above, I'm leaning a Fail for now. However, I'm open to convinced otherwise if the article is improved substantially. Sohom (talk) 16:04, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta Thanks for the review comments. Please find my revert on all the three points:

a. On the reliability part, while I do accept and understand the concern that it might not cover things elaborately and can be expanded, I definitely do not agree with the comment that the section lacks neutrality.

1. The first and third paragraph on the cases filed in the court and the outcome has been mentioned. I suppose there is no issue with the part, the best what can be done is combined for better flow if required rather than ordering chronologically.
2. On the second part, on the reliability debate, the second paragraph presents the concerns raised and the fourth paragraph presents the views of the EC, which are both sides of the coin.

No issues with the section talking about the court case. Sohom (talk) 13:14, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

1. I do agree that the points from the academic research could have been clearer as it just mentions the outcome, which I will accept as a comment and elaborate.
2. On the other events you mentioned,

• In the DEFCON event, it is mentioned that EVMs from 26 countries across the world were hacked but I cannot find any reliable 3P source which mentions the Indian made EVMs were part of it. If you do have sources for the claim, please do share so that it can be incorporated.

Fair enough, I can't find RS that tells me that any of the EVMs were Indian, regardless, multiple Indian reliable sources have drawn a parallel between the 2017 hackathon and India's defensive culture surrounding it's EVMs. No mention of that exist of any of this discussion exists in the current article. Sohom (talk) 13:14, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

• The London hackathon is a propaganda effort by a self proclaimed expert who claimed to have worked on the design of EVMs. It was backed by no research or evidence of his history and is mentioned as such by multiple independent third party sources. So definitely there is no rationale for including that.

Propaganda effort or not, it needs to mentioned, with appropriate RS and background (feel free to mention that it was propaganda effort and that no concrete evidence was provided). Leaving out a claim, gives the impression that the article is non-neutral. Sohom (talk) 13:14, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

• As per your suggestion, I will add the point of one of the researchers being jailed for EVM theft as it might demonstrate that there are constraints placed by EC on the accessing the EVMs to test for vulnerabilities. Additionally, on the EVM hackathon organized by the EC, there were concerns that there were too many constraints or restrictions placed, which can be added to emphasise the point.

Update: The section has been re-arranged. Few more points have been added. On the two points where there are conflicts, I am ok to mention the defcon event with a mention. On the London hackathon, I beg to differ as this has nothing to do with neutrality and the article cannot go on to mention every hearsay and claim without any reliable evidence. But as you insist it as a notable event, have added with a relevant note. Magentic Manifestations (talk) 14:07, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of getting my hands dirty and done some much needed copyediting and rearranged the sections around a bit to break this WP:FIXLOOP. Let me know if that is okay Sohom (talk) 16:28, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

It looks fine! Magentic Manifestations (talk) 10:30, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

b. In the usage section, the security and safety aspects are described once on closing of the votes and in the last part and both are indeed referenced by third party sources (two research papers). While I will add additional third party sources, if you have any specific lines where you consider it inadequate or require additional sourcing, please do specify as it will help me work on finding specific sources for the same.

Please find better sources for the following

• Once a “close” command is issued, the votes already cast in the device's permanent memory cannot be deleted and the device's ability to accept additional votes is disabled mitigating any attempts to open or tamper with the unit -- This is currently sourced to two user manuals and a research paper which does not say anything about being able to "tamper with the unit". (The research paper instead says The Election Commission claimed that votes recorded in the machines are tamper proof, and physical tampering of the devices is easily detectable. However, these claims were later contested by rigorous independent evaluations)
• The third paragraph, which is sourced to a press release and user manuals.

-- Sohom (talk) 13:14, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Update: I have reworded/trimmed select sections. Have provided some additional sources as well. Magentic Manifestations (talk) 14:07, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

c. As per WP:TOI, TOI is a semi-reliable source and has to be taken in context. As the TOI sources are quoted for specific incidents such as court judgements and statements, it should be a acceptable source. But as these are quoted by multiple news sources, I will be happy to provide other sources as others do exist and it is not too difficult.

Please remove/replace the following references: 33, 35, 36, 41, 51, 56, 77 and 78 as of Special:Diff/1238546637. Sohom (talk) 13:14, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Update: This has been addressed. Additional sources have been provided at all instances where TOI/ET has been used. Corresponding sources have been removed. Magentic Manifestations (talk) 14:07, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

On the topic of references, please remove/replace 37. The journal has no internet presence outside of that specific paper, is not published by a well-known publisher and does not appear to be indexed by Scopus etc. I have grave concerns about the reliability of that reference. Sohom (talk) 13:34, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Addressing it.Magentic Manifestations (talk) 14:08, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

While I address some of the comments as specified, do let me know your revert on the same. Cheers! Magentic Manifestations (talk) 10:44, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

• The article looks okay, I'm okay with passing it now. Sohom (talk) 12:30, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.