Shillong, Sept 27: Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) will be used in the upcoming Assembly elections in Meghalaya to be held in February-March, 2018.

This was informed by Meghalaya chief electoral officer, F.R. Kharkongor while launching a special summary revision of electoral rolls for 2018 as well as awareness on VVPAT at a state level function here on Wednesday.

“VVPAT would be used along with electronic voting machines in all 60 constituencies in the upcoming Assembly election in the state,” Kharkongor said.

Kharkongor said that VVPAT would help voters not only to verify votes cast by them, but make them feel satisfied and gratified.

A VVPAT is an independent verification system for electronic voting machines designed to allow voters to verify whether the vote they cast has gone to the candidate of their choice, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and provide a means to audit the stored electronic results.

A voter after pressing a button in the EVM against a symbol of the candidate of his/her choice, will get seven seconds to verify a print out slip in the transparent box of the VVPAT, whether he/she has voted correctly.

On the occasion, a video related to awareness on VVPAT was released besides a local music video “Tarak Tak Tak” a chant that inspired left out voters to get themselves enrolled as well as the electorates to cast their vote.

So far 17.68 lakh voters have been registered, and the target is to enrol atleast 18 lakhs voters by January 1, 2018 before conducting the tenth Assembly election likely to be held in February-March next year.

Another 76,000 left out voters including 54,000 in East Khasi Hills district would be enrolled in the coming months.
Representatives of various political parties also attended the programe.