Indian EVMs not connected to internet, Wi-Fi, says ECI amid Tulsi Gabbard’s comments

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| Photo Credit: K. Murali Kumar

In the backdrop of U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that electronic voting systems are vulnerable to hacking, the Election Commission of India on Friday (April 11, 2025) said India uses Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) which work like “simple, correct and accurate calculators” and cannot be connected to either Internet, Wi-Fi or Infrared.

EC sources said some countries use Electronic Voting Systems which are a mix of multiple systems, machines and processes, including various private networks like Internet.

In India these machines (EVM) have stood legal scrutiny by the Supreme Court and are invariably checked by the political parties at various stages, including the conduct of mock polls before the polling starts.

They pointed out that more than five crore paper trail machine slips have been verified and matched while counting in front of political parties.

Ms. Gabbard had said on Thursday that the U.S. Cabinet has found “evidence of how these electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time and vulnerable to exploitation to manipulate the results of the votes being cast”.

She had further said the findings mandate the use of paper ballots across the country so that voters can have faith in the integrity of the U.S. elections.

Last year, tech czar Elon Musk had called for the elimination of EVMs, citing the risk of being hacked by humans or artificial intelligence (AI). The then Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar had in January responded to Mr. Musk’s claim saying: “A global IT expert said EVMs can be hacked while our elections were going on. They (the U.S.) don’t have EVMs, they have electronic voting mechanisms”.

Opposition parties in India have time and again raised the issue of EVM manipulations.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in his presidential address at the AICC session in Ahmedabad had said: “With the advancement of electronic technology, developed countries of the world have abandoned EVMs and moved towards ballot papers. But our Election Commission is not ready to take cognizance of this problem”.