Rats have caused chaos in the latest round of voting in elections in India after they destroyed dozens of electronic vote counting machines by eating the cables. With more than 800 million voters, India uses the machines to reduce the time in declaring results compared to the old paper ballot system. But voters in Ghaziabad, a town close to the capital New Delhi, were furious when told that rats had ruined the machines, which were stored in a strongroom near a wholesale wheat market. The voting machines were attacked by rats in Ghaziabad, which is on the outskirts of New Dehli.
‘We had taken all possible measures to protect the vote counting machines,’ said a senior official of the Ghaziabad district administration. ‘We realise how important it is to ensure that they are not harmed in any way. But rodent trouble was something we had not expected at all.’
Full Article: Chaos in India after rats chew electronic vote-counting machines | citifmonline.