On Friday (September 30), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) wrote a detailed piece in favour of voting machines, which have been the subject of controversy during the general elections in Brazil.
The article, authored by Juliana Gragnani and Jake Horton, attempted to dismiss all concerns about electronic voting machines that were raised by incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsanaro.
BBC accused Bolsonaro of ‘sowing doubts about the country’s voting system without evidence’ and supposedly echoing the rhetoric of former US President Donald Trump. The Brazilian President had called for public counting of votes, and printable paper ballots to safeguard the voting machines (much like India’s VVPAT system).
BBC, the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, dismissed his concerns as conspiracy theories that are not rooted in reality. To bolster its claims, BBC relied on third-party research and testimonies of the Supreme electoral court of Brazil to build a case against Bolsanaro.
“There is no reasonable proof of fraud going on in the past, at least in big audits that have been done…The view of most of the technical community is that fraud is really hard in the current system. The system can be improved and should be, but that doesn’t mean there’s been fraud,” the BBC quoted one Professor Marcos Simplicio as saying.
Further, into the article, Juliana Gragnani and Jake Horton suggested that the voting machines in Brazil are subject to both internal and external scrutiny. “Before each election the court invites researchers and software experts to look for vulnerabilities in the voting system. This year, more than 20 experts tried to penetrate the system but failed to do so,” the article read.
BBC also accused Bolsanaro of disseminating ‘old misleading videos’ about voting machines, which have been debunked by the Supreme electoral court of Brazil. The UK’s national broadcaster sided with the country’s nodal electoral authority and rightly put the ‘burden of proof’ on Bolsanaro (who has raised concerns about the electronic voting system in the first place).
BBC cast aspersions about electronic voting in India
However, such a privilege was not extended to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the nodal election body in India. The BBC desperately tried to delegitimise it in a bid to cast aspersions about the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used in India.
In an article published on January 25, 2019, BBC’s India correspondent Soutik Biswas claimed that concerns about the technology used in election voting machines (EVMs) are ‘credible’ and have persisted for a long time.
From the very onset, the tone of the article was quite different from the one written about Brazil’s voting machines. In India’s case, BBC was not dismissive of the aspersions cast about its electoral process (which is, by the way, the largest democratic exercise in the world).
“There have been at least seven challenges in the courts but India’s election authorities have steadfastly defended the machines as tamper-proof,” the article read. BBC cited the claims of a conspiracy theorist named Syed Suja who claimed that PM Modi rigged the Lok Sabha elections of 2014.
Despite Syed not providing any evidence for his claims, BBC was quick to reference him in the article and sow seeds of doubt about the electoral process (something which it has now accused Jair Bolsanaro of doing in Brazil).
Instead of putting the burden of proof on the accuser, it tried to put the onus on the Election Commission to negate the claims (unlike the case in Brazil article). “India’s election authorities have steadfastly maintained that the voting machines cannot be tampered with, and physical tampering is easily detectable. From time to time, these claims have been contested,” it said.
BBC also cited experts who believe in the probability of mass-scale hacking of voting machines but have not been able to demonstrate a real-life example for the same. In fact, the Election Commission had invited hackers in 2017 to come to their office and try manipulating results on real EVMs.
Interestingly, none of the conspiracy theorists and self-proclaimed hacking experts turned up for the event. The BBC then went on to highlight stories from different countries where EVMs have been called into question. However, none of the examples suggest a successful execution of mass tampering.
The article also insinuated that transparency in India’s electoral process began only in 2013, with the Supreme Court of India calling for the introduction of paper trails in EVMs.
“…Things may be moving in the right direction in India in efforts to make elections more transparent and trustworthy. Five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that all machines should be equipped with printers producing voter-verifiable paper audit trails,” it said.
UK broadcaster has a history of peddling misinformation
The broadcaster also quoted a computer science professor who was apprehensive of electronic voting systems. “My general opinion is that we should get as much technology out of the process as possible…Software is very hard to get right, and with an intent to have votes not be identified with voters, there is no good way to verify that things have worked as intended,” remarked one Professor Duncan Buell.
While the objective of the recent article on Brazil was to educate the readers against falling for misinformation about voting machines, this 2019 article by BBC was a clear attempt to increase distrust for use of technology in the voting process.
This is not the first time that the BBC resorted to such a narrative-building exercise. In 2017, Opindia had reported how the broadcaster deliberately shared a 2010 article about alleged EVM hacking after BJP swept Uttar Pradesh polls in 2017.
