E-voting critic released on bail (finally)

So much for the world's largest democracy

Interesting how the government ,through it's prosecutors, seems to be more interested in fixing the leak than ensuring the integrity of their voting systems which is what many of the U.S. states did when the Diebold machines were found to be insecure.

Hard to beat paper.

In Canada voting often employs paper forms which are then scanned for tabulation. This means the original document remains intact in the event of challenges.

It is refreshing to hear the magistrate put the Elections Commission's feet to the firs in requiring them to tell him if the machines are secure.

Hari Prasad is a hero -

and if he travels to Sweden, he'd be advised to learn from the experience of others who reveal information the authorities wish to keep hidden and be careful of the honey-pot traps that await him here....

Henri

PS : Paris, because in cases like these, who else ?...

The glacial pace of Indian justice

It sounds like the Magistrate has at least put the EC on the back foot, rather than just swallowing their claims at face value. However Hari Prasad might end up a decade or two older if the Indian judiciary is on its usual form.

It took Salman Rushdie something like 15 gruelling years to finally conclude a legal spat with the Indian tax authorities over the ownership of his deceased fathers house, and it's taken over a decade (so far, although the finish line is in sight) of court action to resolve who should foot the bill for the removal of a derelict freighter a few hundred yards from Goa's most popular beaches. At one point it was odds on the MV River Princess would beat the Indian government to it by simply flaking into a pile of rust before the courts had finally made their mind up. In 1996 one of India's most internationally respected artists had several criminal charges filed against him for painting Hindu deities in the buff, although the courts were a little more sprightly on this occasion with the Supreme Court finally quashing the charges in 2004... although more were brought in 2006. The artist, in his 90s, finally gave up and went into exile.

To these you could add; the Purulia arms drop/Peter Bleach, the St Kitts forgery affair, the Hawala scam (I had to wait till the web was invented to actually work out what 'Hawala' was), The Sugar scam, Bofors, the Babri Masjid, the Urea Scam and the Jessica Lal murder. My personal favourite involves Chandraswamy AKA "the controversial Godman" and his "henchman" K N Aggarawal AKA Mamaji, a briefcase full of money and an all star supporting cast including a former Indian Prime Minister and a few court appearances by convicted serial killer Charles Sobraj AKA "the Serpent" or "the Bikini killer" (and whose own judicial pantomime had him swapping a life (of luxury) sentence in Delhi's Tihar jail for a life sentence in Nepal via a brief turn of celebrity status in the Paris suburbs).

The court reports in the Indian press are the best and most gripping soap opera the country has to offer - you just don't want to be the star.

Mines the one with "The Statesman" in the pocket.

The decision was put to a e-vote

which Hari Prasad won by two hundred votes to nil.

Prosecutors complained that their votes had not been registered correctly, but were told to shut up because the voting machines never lie.

In other news, Mr. Prasad is expected to win India's X-Factor competition, after gaining 100m votes for his rendition of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" accompanied by a child with a kazoo.