A Suggested Electoral Reform:
Shrikant G. Talageri
The NOTA (None-of-the-Above) option has been available in elections in India since (as per my understanding) sometime in 2013. It was conceived and introduced because political parties put up powerful criminal candidates in every election (although of course Independent candidates can also, in many areas. be powerful criminals who can challenge and defeat official party candidates). It gives the voter a right to reject all the candidates on the ballot paper on the ground that he/she does not find any of them to be deserving of his/her vote. The optimistic logic behind this introduction was that if all the candidates are undesirable elements (corrupt, criminal, mercenaries, etc.) the voter can reject all of them and express a “None-of-the-Above” vote which would make clear to the parties and individuals standing for election that, in order to win, one must avoid or refrain from putting up candidates who are corrupt, criminal or mercenary since they can/will be rejected by the voters.
However, in actual point of fact, the NOTA vote is absolutely ineffective: a damp squib or dust-in-the-eyes. Even if, in any particular seat, the NOTA (None-of-the-Above) option gets more votes than every single other candidate, and in fact even if NOTA gets more than 50% of the votes, the actual candidate (of all those standing from that seat) who gets more votes than the others will still be declared elected. Therefore the whole idea of NOTA is nothing but a sick joke played on the voters, unless and until the number or percentage of NOTA votes officially and legally becomes a deciding factor in the result.
Therefore, for NOTA to be effective or to make any sense at all, and to cease to be a sick joke on the voters, the first and most important change that should be made is to compulsorily declare a re-election in any seat where NOTA gets more votes than each of the actual candidates. The second thing would be to ban all the candidates from that seat to stand for re-election (either in the re-election to follow in that particular seat for a particular number of years, or from standing for elections from any other seat as well.
Of course:
1. All this naively assumes that there will be enough aware and concerned voters who would vote NOTA and bring about such a situation.
2. I am not the first to make these suggestions. They have been made umpteen times by various people, and have, every time, been soundly and effectively stonewalled.
Nevertheless, if NOTA is to make any sense, and cease to be regarded as a sick joke on the voters, the above electoral reforms in the matter of NOTA must be implemented.
But my intention in writing this article was to suggest another new electoral reform (without, to be honest, being under the faintest bhram or misapprehension that this suggestion will find any support. But, for the record, I am making it nevertheless):
Along with the (reformed) NOTA option, there should also be ABHIE Options.
In an earlier article of mine, “The Morals/Ethics of Voting (Or Not Voting) In Elections”, I had pointed out the following:
“This brings us back to the question: is it
the sacred, or at least a patriotic or moral,
duty for every true citizen to go and cast his/her vote either for NOTA or for
a particular chosen candidate?
I have always viewed this situation as being
comparable to a similar “option-full” imaginary situation where one has to
choose one of many different options, in the light of the cold and hard
fact (obvious to anyone but the most blind, prejudiced or deluded citizen) that
all politicians, to different degrees, are cynical and cold-blooded mercenaries
who are there in the fray only to grab power and make money. Here is that
imaginary situation: a man is going through an isolated jungle and suddenly
finds himself confronted by a gang of bandits who have managed to capture a girl
(who incidentally is known to the man, being a member of a family with whom he
is on very friendly terms) and have decided that one of them will rape her, but
cannot come to an agreement as to which of them it should be. They capture this
man as well, and decide that he will choose and decide which
one of them should be chosen to have the “privilege” to rape her.
What will the man do?
Like the voter in an election, he also has two
main options: he can either choose one of them, or simply keep quiet and refuse
to choose (knowing that he can do nothing to save the girl, but also determined
to not be part of a process of deciding which of them will do the deed).
If he chooses to open his mouth and give his
choice, he, again, has four sub-options:
1. He replies: “none of you should rape her”.
2. He replies (referring to one particular
one of the bandits): “keep that particular man away from her”, since he has
personal knowledge that that particular man is a particularly vicious, brutal
and sadistic person (somewhat like the “minor” who raped “Nirbhaya” in the
famous Delhi gangrape case who inserted a rod into her and pulled out her
intestines).
3. He actually chooses one of the bandits whom
he knows to be the least brutal and vicious among them.
4, He actually chooses one of the bandits for
some personal reason or due to some personal prejudice or affiliation.
Of course, there is a basic difference in the
situation confronting this imaginary man and the situation confronting a person
who has to vote in an election: this man knows that if he refuses to reply or
exercises the first two of the four above sub-options, he himself will be
beaten up or tortured by the bandits, whereas the voter in an election (apart
from the option to not vote) has the option to vote NOTA perhaps without
having to suffer for his decision, or of course the option to exercise
his vote.
This imaginary man, and the person who has to
vote in an election, both have to take a decision, and while external
pressures can ultimately compel this man to give his “vote”,
that compulsion is not present in the case of the voter in an election: he/she
still has three options, either (a) to not vote at all, or (b) to vote NOTA,
or (c) to cast a valid vote in favor of any one particular candidate.
But while the two situations have the above very basic difference, they do have two things in common: (a) in both cases casting the vote is a responsibility (even though ultimately one single vote hardly ever decides the result) and (b) in both cases casting the vote is a purely personal practical choice (whether done under compulsion or of one’s own will) but under no circumstances is it a moral or ethical duty. How can it be any kind of moral or ethical duty to give sanction or approval to a crook?”
Clearly, sometimes a voter’s preference to vote against a particular candidate rather than to vote for a particular candidate (see point 2 highlighted above) may represent his/her true voting choice. In that case, voting NOTA or voting for some other (than the one whom he/she wants to vote against) candidate is not sufficient exercise of his/her right to vote. To fully exercise that right there should also be ABHIE (Anyone-But-Him/Her) options – one for every single candidate on the ballot list. If the candidate wants to exercise his/her right to vote against (rather than for) a particular candidate on the list, then it should be made possible to cast such a vote and have it affect the result.
The principle is the same as in many competitive or analytical tests: if there are 20 questions and the person taking the test gets 18 questions right, and leaves 2 questions unanswered, then the person gets 18 marks out of 20. But if the person gets 18 questions right, and 2 questions wrong, then the person gets 18-2=16 marks out of 20: the wrong answers serve as negative answers reducing the marks.
Likewise, if there are 10 candidates on a ballot list, there should be 20 options: 10 positive options (to vote for a particular candidate) and 10 negative options (to vote against a particular candidate). The number of negative ABHIE (Anyone-But-Him/Her) votes received by every particular candidate will be deducted from the number of positive votes received by that candidate and the candidate will be deemed to have received that many votes. Thus if a candidate gets 42000 positive votes and 3500 ABHIE (Anyone-But-Him/Her) votes, the candidate will be deemed to have got 38500 votes.
Therefore, in my opinion, the true preferences of the voters can only receive full representation when the ballot paper not only has a NOTA option, but also has one ABHIE (Anyone-But-Him/Her) option for each candidate on the ballot list:
1. If a particular candidate gets more votes than all the other options (i.e. than the NOTA tally as well as the tally of each other individual rival candidate, after the ABHIE (Anyone-But-Him/Her) votes are deducted from each candidate’s tally) then that particular candidate stands elected.
2. If the NOTA votes are more than those of any individual candidate (after the ABHIE (Anyone-But-Him/Her) votes are deducted from each candidate’s tally), then there should be a re-election with new candidates. If the same thing happens again, the seat should remain unrepresented – at least that is my suggestion in that circumstance.
I simply wanted to put my views on record. I am not interested in entering into nitpicking arguments on this issue.
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