Make voting compulsory

By A Surya Prakash

In the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election held in May 2007, just 1.10 lakh of the 2.42 lakh electors in the Govindnagar constituency exercised their franchise. A candidate of the Congress, who secured 29,993 votes (just 7.5 per cent of the total electorate) was declared elected in that multi-cornered contest. In the same election, in Deoria, just 40 per cent of the 3.49 lakh voters registered their votes. This, too, was a multi-cornered contest and the winner, a candidate of the Samajwadi Party, made it to the Assembly riding on the support of a mere 7.3 per cent of the electors. In Varanasi Cantonment, the Bharatiya Janata Party bagged the seat with the support of just 8.2 per cent of the total electors in that constituency.

There are hundreds of such examples from elections to Parliament and the State Assemblies over the last 10 years. They tell us how the system of representation has gone horribly wrong and how the very basic principle of democracy — that the opinion of the majority shall prevail — stands negated. The time has, therefore, come for us to re-evaluate the efficacy of the first-past-the-post system that has been in vogue since the first general election in 1952.

The defect in this system is not peculiar to Uttar Pradesh. A similar trend is visible in all States which are witnessing multi-cornered contests but an analysis of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Election held in 2007 only reinforces the argument that the present electoral system has failed us. Of the 403 constituencies in the State, winning candidates in just 14 constituencies secured more than 50 per cent of the votes polled, which means that 389 candidates made it to the Assembly on the support of a minority of the voters in their constituencies. In Karnataka, winning candidates in 175 of the 224 constituencies secured less than 50 per cent of the votes polled.

There are many reasons why this electoral system has proved to be a disaster in our country. Among the notable factors are voter lethargy and voter fatigue, growing cynicism about democracy and politics, atomisation of the polity consequent to the emergence of regional and caste-based political parties over the last 25 years and the consequential fragmentation of votes and lowering of the threshold for victory in elections. With almost every State witnessing a triangular or quadrangular contest among political parties, every election to an Assembly or the Lok Sabha is now resulting in a fractured mandate that virtually knocks the bottom out of the logic of representative democracy.

Election data from across the country since 1996 abounds with such examples of the disjunction between peoples’ will and electoral victories. Since only 40 to 50 per cent of the electors cast their votes and the loyalties of even this minority is torn between four or five political parties, the winner of an election to a State Assembly or the Lok Sabha usually ends up with the support of just 10 to 20 per cent of the total electors in the constituency.

As a result we do not have the faintest idea of what actually is the mandate of the majority of the electors in a given constituency. This remains a mystery forever. What we have before us is actually the preference of a minority of voters. However, despite mounting evidence that most legislators in India today enter democratic bodies riding on a minority vote, politicians, who are the major beneficiaries of this systemic defect, are unwilling to address the issue and search for remedies.

But all those who wish to see a truly representative democracy in India will have to press for legal measures to remedy the situation. Among the many solutions on offer, the one that I find most attractive is compulsory voting. This is the first step we need to take in order to lend depth and meaning to our democratic process.

There is nothing original or revolutionary in the idea of compulsory voting because this is already being implemented in one form or the other in 33 countries in the world and there are countries which enforced this over a century ago. According to the Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a number of countries across the world have made voting compulsory. Prominent among them are Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore, Argentina, Austria, Cyprus, Peru, Greece and Bolivia. Belgium set the ball rolling with the introduction of compulsory voting in 1892. Australia introduced it in 1924.

We need to look at the laws pertaining to compulsory voting in all these countries and draft a law that suits our country. The penalty that is imposed on violators of this law varies from nation to nation. For example, in Australia, those who fail to turn up for voting are fined 20 to 50 Australian dollars. Citizens who do not pay the fine could face a prison sentence. Switzerland, Austria, Cyprus and Peru also impose fines on absentee voters.

In Belgium, repeated abstention by a voter can lead to disenfranchisement. In Singapore a citizen who does not vote is removed from the list of electors. Getting your name back on the voters’ list can be cumbersome. In Bolivia, the penalty for not voting in an election is a salary cut, whereas in Greece the penalty could be harsher conditions for securing a passport or a driving licence.

We also need to incorporate this in the Article dealing with Fundamental Duties in the Constitution. Voting in elections must be made a fundamental duty. The right to vote must also become a duty to vote. The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution recommended something along these lines. It said in its report that “duty to vote at elections” and active participation in the democratic process of governance “should be included in Article 51 A”.

The splintering of political parties, combined with low voter turn-out, has reduced the democratic process to a complete farce. We can lend some authenticity to India’s democratic march by taking the difficult but inevitable decision to make voting compulsory. If we fail to do so and allow the citizens the luxury of treating elections with contempt, the day may not be far off when forces inimical to democracy will use these very arguments to put an end to the charade that is currently on and snuff out what little is left of representative democracy in India.