Simultaneous election ok, but EVM ?

Free Thinker *

EVM with Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) at Secretariat, Imphal in December 2016 :: Pix - Deepak Oinam

Elections are the staple diet of democracy; but frequent elections compel us to spend a lot of time, money, energy etc., on conducting them and also on the hustings. In the last few years we have been on the election mode almost every five months; after the parliamentary general election we are having a series of State Assembly elections one after another; followed by Panchayat/Municipal/ Nagarpalika elections. In addition, from time to time we are having by-polls and Rajya Sabha biennial elections.

Amending the Constitution for holding simultaneous election (at least for the State Assemblies & Lok Sabha) and having fix tenure is not an impossible task provided a larger consensus is arrived among the political parties.

We were having simultaneous elections till the late sixties since independence. Holding simultaneous elections is really a prudent proposal made by the Hon’ble Prime Minister and His Excellency the President. It will save a lot of money, human resources and most importantly national time.

However my additional argument in favor of a simultaneous election is based on a weird premise; every election my brothers and sisters (voters) get a lot of financial tips. On a single election, I was told that a voter gets 5000 Rupees that too from a single candidate, in a particular constituency of the State.

Recently information comes from Chennai saying that each voter gets about 10000 Rupees from a Party during a by-election of a prestigious constituency. So, what I feel is that if a voter gets that much of money from each candidate, the total will be quite sizable. And certainly a voter will get twenty to thirty thousands in one simultaneous election.

Assuming that a family has five voters and each voter earns approximately 25000 each (in mega simultaneous elections), the family will be richer by one Lakh Rupees. They can simply start a small business, like opening a local grocery store, tea stall, book-store, ‘Singju-Bora’ restaurant, rice-fish hotel, or a pan dukan etc.

In case of a single voter, with his election earning of 20000-25000 Rupees can go for a bicycle or a second hand motor-bike and can easily become a newspaper / milk hawker or a vegetable/fish/chicken vendor.

In a single election a voter may get a small amount of money which he/she normally spends on momentary pleasure etc. Whereas simultaneous election means larger number of candidates and possibility of getting more monetary favors from the candidates is very high.

Once you gather a good amount of money you can always think of investment or taking up some pursuits at the individual level. Please don’t blame me for encouraging vote buying business. I am just sharing the factual ground realities.

A big family or an election agent can gather a substantial amount of money during the elections and they can start a comfortable business dealing either with piggery or poultry, or pisciculture, or viticulture or horticulture or apiculture or the latest bamboo plantation or organic farming etc. In one word I can simply anticipate that simultaneous election can generate a lot of employment and a series of business.

We have been talking about State funding of elections for the last many years. I am not in favor of such a move. Instead we must find a way for corporate funding of elections. It is an open secret that even today the Corporates or multinationals or Companies or the Rich are directly funding the parties/candidates.

We may simply find a way for doing the same in a much more organized and legalized way. For instance, a corporate/ company earning a profit of hundred crore may be asked to contribute ten crores (giving tax incentives) for the election.

The fund so collected may be distributed among the national and regional parties under a feasible formula within the supervision of the Election Commission. At the same time we should not allow any kind of foreign funding for our elections.

Again every citizen may be allowed to contribute as much as they want in a transparent manner unlike the bonds which can be procured through party workers or gullible citizens by disbursing cash.

Last but not the least, EVMs are simple computers.

My friends who majored in computers (hard & soft) say that all computers are hackable including the super-computers. So, it is high time to go back to the old ballot system where manual rigging is the only possibility that too sporadically.

For our kind information Japan, the manufacturer of EVM chips does not use EVM machines for their elections. True democracy is much more precious than a few billion Rupees. “Back to the Ballots”. (Bamboo pulp papers are really good for ballots).