Former Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar responded to Elon Musk's criticism of electronic voting machines (EVMs) on Sunday, stating that he strongly disagrees with Musk's remarks.
Chandrasekhar said it’s "a huge sweeping generalisation," even as the Tesla boss responded by saying "anything can be hacked".
The exchange of posts on X (formerly Twitter) unfolded as Chandrasekhar expressed opposing views to Musk's statement in which he suggested doing away with electronic voting machines.
"We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high," Musk wrote on Saturday, sharing a post by Robert F Kennedy Jr that had cited media reports about hundreds of voting irregularities related to electronic voting machines in Puerto Rico's primary elections.
Chandrasekhar, who previously served as the minister of state for Electronics and IT, had a different view from Musk regarding EVMs. He contended that Musk's remark constituted a "huge sweeping generalisation."
"This is a huge sweeping generalisation statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong," Chandrasekhar said.
He further said that while such a view "may apply to the US and other places - where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet-connected Voting machines", the Indian EVMs are secure and isolated from any network.
"But 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," Chandrasekhar added.
He asserted that electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done and quipped, "We would be happy to run a tutorial, Elon".
Replying to this, Musk said: "Anything can be hacked".
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