India's first electronic election a big deal (13 deaths)

[librechik]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001907570_indiaelection20.html

snip

"NEW DELHI — The world's largest democracy doesn't do anything small.

Just ask A.N. Jha. As deputy election commissioner, it is Jha's job to ensure that, starting today, more than 660 million eligible voters will be able to cast their votes from the smallest desert village of Rajasthan to the rain-soaked jungles of Manipur, and from the Himalayan heights of Uttaranchal to the dreamy aquamarine coasts of Tamil Nadu.

There is one complication. This will be the first all-electronic Indian election, with some 725,000 electronic voting machines in every voting station in the country. No small task. But no hanging chads for India, thank you.

An experiment in cutting-edge voting is only part of the story of India's election. Democracy is still a passionate exercise in India, full of gimmicks and movie-star glamour, high technology and cheap thuggery, and, quite often, serious ideas about India's future place in the world. All this contributes to much higher voter turnouts than in the United States. The winners may be convicts or holy men or seasoned pros, but the result — and the three-week process of voting — can be as entertaining as a Bollywood thriller..."

snip

also, the following excerpt appears in the wire version of the story , not the above version from the CSM:

In Manipur, another restive northeastern state where the
outlawed United National Liberation Front threatened voters with
"dire consequences" if they went to the polls, rebels took
electronic voting machines from polling centers Tuesday. Militants
also kidnapped 30 polling officials, according to P. Doungel, a
deputy with the Manipur police.

These people really express themselves about the unreliability of DREs! Yikes!

[mbperrin]

1. Maybe if more expressed themselves like this, something

would get done.