New Delhi, March 21 The Election Commission has completed the first round of randomization of electronic voting machines and paper trail devices to be used in the April 9 elections in Assam, Kerala, and Puducherry.
To enhance transparency and confidence among political parties and voters, the poll authority randomly distributes electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voter-verifiable paper audit trails (VVPATs) to different constituencies in a state going to polls.
The EVMs are allocated to their respective polling stations through a two-stage randomization process.
In the first stage, the EVMs are randomly allocated from district-level warehouses to the Assembly constituencies. In the second stage, the EVMs are randomly allocated from the Assembly level to the polling stations.
The Election Commission (EC) said on Saturday that randomization has also been completed for the Assembly bypolls in Goa, Karnataka, Nagaland, and Tripura, to be held on April 9.
The first randomization was done using the EVM management system (EMS) by the district election officers in the presence of representatives from national and state-recognized political parties.
The list of the randomized EVMs has been shared with the political parties, the poll authority said.
