Indian challenges Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sparked strong reactions in India with his stance on electronic voting machines (EVMs). The country of 1.4 billion people recently completed a general election in which 640 million Indians cast their votes, mostly using EVMs.

Musk on Saturday argued that electronic voting machines should be "abolished."

"The risk of being hacked by humans or AI is low, but still too high," he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). He was responding to a post by US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was referring to an Associated Press report that alleged vote fraud linked to electronic voting machines in the Puerto Rican primary election. But Musk's post has reignited an old debate in India. "This is a very blanket statement that suggests that no one can build secure digital hardware," said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who served as India's Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology in the last Modi government.

Chandrasekhar, a prominent lawmaker in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said the devices used in the US could be connected to the internet and therefore vulnerable. However, the EVMs used in India are "specially designed for simple tasks." The devices are "isolated" from any network and are "factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed," the former minister argued.

Sanjay Dikshit, a prominent Indian author and former government official, also weighed in on the discussion, offering Musk $1 million if he could prove that the country's voting machines could be hacked. "If you succeed in hacking, you get $1 million, if you fail, you have to pay the price," Dikshit wrote to X. India's EVMs, which were replaced by paper ballots in 2004, have sparked heated debates on multiple occasions, with losing parties blaming them for unfavourable results, especially in general elections.

Rahul Gandhi, leader of the country's main opposition Indian National Congress, supported Musk's statement, claiming that India's EVMs are "black boxes" that no one is allowed to check. Gandhi said the Election Commission of India must ensure complete transparency about the machines and the process or abolish them.

Akhilesh Yadav, leader of the Samajwadi Party, a key ally of the Congress, has also questioned the reliability of EVMs and demanded that all future elections should be conducted using ballot papers.

Notably the BJP has also blamed its election defeat against the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on "EVM fraud" in the past.

The Indian Supreme Court in April warned against questioning the efficiency of India's electoral system, including the reliability of EVMs. The court heard numerous petitions proposing the use of paper ballots, citing examples from European countries. In response, Sanjiv Khanna, one of the judges hearing the case, said: "We have our own system. It works."