Limitations
A candidate can know how many people from a polling station voted for him. For example, in Indian general elections, 2004; the day after the election results were declared, The Times of India, Mumbai carried statistics about which areas in Mumbai voted for which candidate. People from Kandivali gave more votes to Govinda, while people from Borivali polled more votes for his opponent Ram Naik. This is a significant issue particularly if lop-sided votes for/against a candidate are cast in individual polling stations. The Election Commission of India has stated that the manufacturers of the EVMs have developed a 'Totaliser' unit which can connect several Balloting Units and would display only the overall results from an Assembly or a Lok Sabha constituency instead of votes from individual polling stations.
The control units do not electronically transmit their results back the Election Commission, even though a simple and unconditionally secure protocol for doing this exists. The Indian EVMs are purposely designed as stand-alone units to prevent any intrusion during electronic transmission of results. Instead, the EVMs are collected in counting booths and tallied on the assigned counting day(s) in the presence of polling agents of the candidates.
Read more about this topic: Indian Voting Machines
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