LESSONS ON THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN ELECTIONS a paper trail as a safeguard, as was common practice in other countries. The Supreme Court agreed and held that “the paper trail is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections. The confidence of the voters in the EVMs can be achieved only with the introduction of the ‘paper trail.’ EVMs with VVPAT [voter-verified paper audit trail] system ensure the accuracy of the voting system.” 26 The ECI and other stakeholders argued that the VVPAT system was the best option to provide an auditable paper trail but noted that it required time for full implementation. The court allowed the ECI to introduce paper trails through the VVPAT system gradually, given there were more than one million voting booths that would need modification. Contrary to the jurisprudence in Germany, the court in India did not challenge the overall use of voting machines, but instead focused on the verifiability of the system — giving time for the EMB to progressively operationalize the required system country wide. This case is further discussed in IFES’ 2021 paper, Risk Limiting Audits: A Guide for Global Use. 27 Issue 2: Ensuring a Secure, Transparent and Verifiable Electronic Results Transmission System Transparent and verifiable results transmission systems are critical for ensuring free and fair elections. This section examines case studies in Malawi (2019) and Kenya (2017) where improper or incomplete mechanisms for electronic results transmission resulted in elections being declared null and void. In 2019, in Chilima vs. Mutharika and Election Commission, the Malawi High Court addressed a petition challenging the results of the presidential election that raised constitutional issues. After months of investigation, and after the president had already been inaugurated, the court annulled the elections and ordered fresh elections to be held within 150 days of its judgment, which was upheld by the Supreme Court. The flawed use of the electronic results management system (eRMS) by the Commission was among the violations alleged by the petitioners. 28 The allegations included the deletion of data in the eRMS and rigging of tallies at the National Tally Centre by an unknown user. The court found no evidence to show that data was deleted in the eRMS since the Commission was able to retrieve records of all 5,002 polling stations, nor did it find proof of the alleged rigging at the National Tally Centre. However, the court held that the security of the eRMS was compromised due to the use of default account usernames with known passwords that were shared by several personnel of the Commission. The court stated (paragraph 1329), “[c]onsequently, we find that the default user accounts presented a risk to the integrity of the eRMS. This detracted from the quality and reliability of the eRMS and qualified as a cause for questioning the final national election result which was electronically collated and tallied by the system.” Overall, the court found that certain actions and irregularities raised suspicions about the process, even if actual manipulation or fraud was not proved. This issue of Swamy v. Election Commission (2013, India), para 29. Shein, E. and Brown, A, Risk Limiting Audits: A Guide for Global Use, IFES, March 2021, https://www.ifes.org/sites/default/files/migrate/ifes_risk-limiting_audits_a_guide_for_global_use_march_2021.pdf, p.9. 28 Other alleged irregularities included the use of altered tally sheets (tippex was used in some cases), omissions in logbooks and missing signatures on tally sheets. 26 27 14