Elon Musk vs BJP's Rajeev Chandrashekhar on whether EVMs can be hacked

Elon Musk vs BJP's Rajeev Chandrashekhar on whether EVMs can be hacked

A day after Tesla CEO Elon Musk called for elimination of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) due to the high risk of them being hacked, former Union Minister and BJP leader Rajeev Chandrashekhar on Sunday countered him, saying his statement was “huge sweeping generalization” and claimed that Indian voting machines can’t be hacked.

“This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong,” Chandrashekhar said, adding “Elon Musk’s view may apply to US and other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet connected Voting machines.”

The Indian EVMs, the BJP leader claimed, are custom designed with now way in.

“…Indian EVMs are custom designed, secure and isolated from any network or media – No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet. ie there is no way in. Factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed,” he said.

The former IT minister also offered to run a tutorial on how EVMs can be built right.

“Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We wud be happy to run a tutorial, Elon,” he added.

However, the Tesla chief was firm on his assertions and rejected the BJP leader’s claim saying “anything can be hacked”.

What Elon Musk said on EVMs?

Musk had raised concerns that the risk of EVMs being hacked by humans or AI was too high and that they should be eliminated.

“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Musk said.

The Tesla CEO’s remarks on EVM came in response to US politician Robert F Kennedy Jr’s post in which he had raised the issue of EVM irregularities in Puerto Rico’s primary elections.

Kennedy is contesting the US Presidential elections 2024 as an independent candidate.