Both Jayalalitha and Subramaniam Swamy have questioned the authenticity of the recently concluded general elections. While they have not substantiated their allegations, consider these facts:
- Media organizations were prohibited from conducting exit polls.
- Navin Chawla was accused by ex-CEC Gopalaswami to be partisan, going so far as taking bathroom breaks during crucial election planning meetings, and passing on information about the happenings to the Congress netas.
- There is no verifiable paper audit trail that independently proves that my vote was registered for the candidate of my choice.
- The candidate's name is linked to the voting button via a strip of paper stuck to the top of the voting machine (rough analogy: numbers stuck to a phone keypad). How do we know that the paper is really in sync with the candidate details fed into the machine? For that matter, how do we even know for sure that two buttons are not connected to the same candidate?
- There is a huge disconnect between then opinion polls and the actual results.
