Progressing to the stage of 'People's Mandate'
- Part 2 -

Akash Rajkumar *

ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Electoral system or Voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how the results are determined. Political electoral system is organized by government, and is defined by constitution and electoral laws. It is typically conducted by the Election commission.

There are many variation in electoral system with the most common system being the First-pass-the-post voting (FPTP), Block Voting, the Two-Round (Run-off) System, Proportional Representation and ranked Voting. In some system, a missed system of both proportional and non-proportional system is used.

Plurality voting is a system in which the candidate with the highest number of votes wins. There is no requirement to get a majority of votes. In cases where there is a single position to be filled, it is known as the First-Pass-the-Post (FPTP). It is the second most used electoral system for national legislature, with 58 countries adopting it. The vast majority are the former British colonies.

The phrase First-pass-the-post voting (FPTP) itself is a metaphor of British Horse racing, where there is a post at the finish line and the furthest ahead in the race wins it. There is no specific percentage "finish line" required to win in this system. It is also the second most used for Presidential election. A total of 19 countries adopt it.

In FPTP which is formally called Single Member Plurality (SMP) voting or informally called 'choose one out of the group' contrast to rank voting or score voting. A voter cast their vote only for one candidate of their choice and the candidate who receives the majority number of votes win, even if they get less than 50%. Getting less than 50% of the total vote is commonly seen in contest having two or more popular candidates to be chosen from.

Advocates of FPTP argue that the system is easy to understand. The ballots can more easily be counted and processed. It often produces government which has legislative voting majorities, thus providing the government the necessary legislative power to implement their electoral manifestoes during their term of office.

This may be beneficial for the country in question where government's legislative agendas have broad public support or at least benefit the society as whole. The supporters of this system also argue that proportional representation may enable smaller parties to become decisive in legislature and gain leverage they would not otherwise enjoy and FPTP reduces the chances of such.

Tony Blair defended FPTP saying the other system may lead to small parties having 'influences disproportionate to their votes.' David Cameron cited a 'a parliament full of second choices who no one really wanted but didn't really object to either.' Winston Churchill criticised other system as 'determined by the worthless votes given for the second worthless candidates.'

Critics of FPTP system argues that it failed to reflect the popular vote in the number of parliamentary/ legislative seats awarded to competing parties. It failed to reflect the accurate views of the voters. It often creates a false majority by over-representing the majority party while under-representing the smaller ones.

It only manufactures the majority by exaggerating the share of seat and penalised smaller ones specially having spatial dispersed support. It also creates a situation of wasted votes- the votes which were casted for the losing candidates. On this basis a large majority of votes may play no part in determining the outcome.

The winner takes all system may be one of the important reason behind the low turnout of polling percentage in countries following FPTP system. It also encourages tactical voting. Voters may tend to vote for the candidate with probability of winning rather than the candidate desired to be voted. This gave media the substantial power to change the perception of the citizen in tactical voting.

The candidate with the most media attention will be the most popular one. A new candidate with no track record may lose votes due to tactical voting. It may promote votes against instead of votes for. Under this system a small party may draw seat away from a ;arger party that it is more similar to and vice versa.

The recommendation of the 2002 Commission was not implemented leading to the interference of the Supreme Court in 2007. The apex court demanded the reasons for non implementations. On 4th of July 2008, the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs(CCPA) decided to implement the recommendations. The delimitations of four north-eastern states was deferred due to security reasons.

The states were Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur by a Presidential order on 28th February 2008. Assam was directed to implement delimitation on 28th of February 2020 and the remaining north eastern states along with Jammu and Kashmir on 6th March, 2020, all the four north-eastern states had been put to halt since March of 2022.

Moreover , the Constitution of India was specifically amended in 2002, by the 84th Amendment, to postpone any interstate delimitation till 2026 on the basis of 2021 census.

In India, Article 81 of the Constitution stipulates for FPTP. Took up the provision (draft article 67) for discussion on 4th of January, 1949. In the CA, members like Kazi Syed Karimuddin, K.T. Shah, Mahboob Ali Baig Sahib raised for a proportional representation with single transferrable voting system. They called the FPTP system as an undemocratic procedure and unrepresentative of the diverse ethnic socio linguistic background.

However the Assembly was held nearly seven decades ago, when the literacy rate of the country was only a meager 18.33 %. So representatives like M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, Dr B.R. Ambedkar argued for FPTP considering the low literacy rate and the illiterate nature was not a suitable ground for adopting something like Proportional representation which shows an inherent advance nature compared to FPTP system.

The British Parliament's Royal Commission Report of 1910 was used by Ambedkar to stand for his claim. Regarding the rights of the minorities which Ambedkar stood for recklessly, he affirms that minorities' interests were better safeguarded through reservation in parliament than the system of proportional representation. Ulti- mately the Assembly sided with Ambedkar and Ayya-nagar on adopting FPTP.

But with time things have changed. The literacy rate have rocketed upto 74.45 in 2011 census and likely to increase further in the ongoing 2021 census. Moreover, post 2000 we have seen a nature of coalition governments, and absolute majority have not been attained by any of the national parties. Apart from constitutional reservations to SCs and STs, many marginalized minorities are being under-represented due to their own socio-economic backwardness.

In fact, if we follow the election campaigning in India closely, then elections are primarily fought on caste and religious lines, to avoid which the constitution maker had chosen FPTP over PR for they feared PR would lead to political parties being formed on sectarian grounds. However, the country today is as polarised as it can be minus the necessary safeguards for religious minorities.

A democratic decision in order to be considered legitimate must include all those affected by it in the decision-making process. The FPTP system clearly violates this as minorities are not even accorded representation, forget about participation in the decision making process. An electoral system skewed in favour of a majority is not conducive to a heterogeneous India, particularly when the Constitution also does not have political safeguards for religious minorities.

The Law Commission in its 170th report, submitted in 1999, recommended that India may combine the FPTP system with PR, modelled on the lines of the hybrid system followed in Germany. To that end, the report suggested an increase in the Lok Sabha seats by an additional 25% which could be filled by PR while the FPTP system would continue to be used as earlier for the existing seats.

This proposal was reiterated by the Law Commission in its 255th report issued in 2015 though the government is yet to examine its proposals and take the next steps. Recently, after the state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh once again produced skewed results in favour of the leading party, an all-party parliamentary panel has started looking at alternatives to FPTP.

Even internationally, there is growing disenchantment with FPTP and many democracies including UK and Canada, are embracing PR. In fact, Nepal, has chosen a hybrid electoral sys- tem combining FPTP with PR. Looking at the data of the 2017 general election of Manipur, the number of candidate who had crossed at least 50% of the total vote polled in their respective constituency amounts to only in 14 constituencies out of the total 60.

So the adoption of FPTP system, cannot establish the inclusiveness desired by democracy. So a representative elected out of this system had at least half of the electorate voted against him. This is not a clear sign of a fair election

Democracy, in order to be legitimate, has to be inclusive and this cannot be sacrificed at the altar of stability and simplicity. In India itself, there is a fast-growing recognition that the FPTP system may not completely fulfil the goal of representative democracy.

Concluded ...