Proposed Electoral reforms for India and its states
CENTER & ODISHA August 28th. 2011, 1:55pmAs per this report in Times of India Anna and his team have further plans. One of those plans is "Electoral Reforms." Following is an excerpt from that report:
"We have to change the election system of the country… we have the right to reject," he said, adding that people should be allowed to use the option not to vote if they don’t like any candidate.
I completely agree that "Electoral Reforms" is an important issue. I have thought about it for some time. Following are some of my thoughts.
1. Holding Primaries: In the current system the party bosses have the ultimate say in terms of their candidates. So Sonia Gandhi, Nitin Gadkari, Sharad Pawar, Naveen Patnaik etc. have the ultimate say of their candidates in some faraway place in Odisha. How much sense does that make? Since it is extremely difficult to win as an independent, create a new party and run, or have a chance to convince existing parties and their boses to field you as a candidate, it creates a huge barrier for someone to enter politics and get elected and as a result a very huge percentage of elected representatives are family members of past or current representatives. Also, often the situations arise when none of the candidates chosen by the party bosses are "good". To address these the best way is to introduce "primaries" or "preliminary elections" for all recognized parties. These preliminary election would then determine who the candidate of a particular party will be. Laws can be made to decide who can vote in these primaries. In US, in some states only party members can vote for the primary elections of that party and in other states there are open primaries. Open primaries is much easier to implement. So basically what will happen is before the election there will be another election where there can be multiple candidates of each party. As before everyone can only vote for one candidate total. After the primary elections the top voted candidate from each party goes on to the main election.
2. Removal of the anti-defection law: The anti-defection law passed in 1985 as the 52nd amendment to the Indian constitution is a bad piece of legislation. Because of it MPs do not have the freedom to vote their conscience or vote as per the will of their constituents. They have to vote as dictated by their party leader. This is extremely dangerous. The following illustrates it. Currently, if their is a single party with majority in Delhi it can pass whatever bill its boss wants. Now imagine someone is able to blackmail this boss. (Say the blackmailer possesses some document that can greatly harm the party boss.) This blackmailer can now pass whatever bill it wants. But abolishing the anti-defection law and allowing MPs to vote their conscience would mean government motions may fail resulting in the government being forced to resign under the collective responsibility principle. This is not desirable. So additional changes would be necessary to avoid this. See (5) below.
3. Provide mechanisms to recall an elected representative: If an elected representative is out-of-synch with the voters of his/her constituency there should be a mechanism to recall that representative and have a new election. That way elected representatives can not forget their voters between elections and only show up around the election time. (Team Anna has mentioned this as one of their goals.)
4. Government funding of election: Currently a big reason the elected representatives are corrupt is that they have to find funds for their election expenses. Many of them, though not personally corrupt, participate and if not participate then allow (and turn a blind eye) someone to raise funds (mostly in an illegal manner) for their elections. This can be avoided if government funds elections. Such a system is in place in the US; it allows a candidate to refuse this funding and use his/her own funding.
5. Direct election of CM and PM but with term limits of maximum of two terms: Came across the following suggestion of a clever way to directly elect CMs and PM. To that I will add that our CMs and PMs should have a term limit of maximum of two terms. This will allow for young leadership to emerge more easily.
… consider the idea of adding a single non-voting seat to every State Assembly and to the Lok Sabha. This single non-voting seat could have for its constituency all eligible voters within that State in the case of a State Assembly and similarly it could have all of the eligible voters in India in the case of the Lok Sabha. During elections this all-State or all-India constituency could go to polls along with the other legislative and parliamentary constituencies. The person who gets elected to this non-voting Lok Sabha or Assembly seat could be automatically considered to be the Leader of the House as he or she would be reflecting the collective will of all the voters of that Legislative Assembly or Parliament. Since the seat is a non-voting addition to the strength of the House this seat will not change the balance of power in the legislature which continues to be same as before.
By virtue of being the leader of the House the person elected to the all-State or all-India constituency will have to be invited by the Governor or the President to form the next Government as the Chief Minister or Prime Minister. Irrespective of whether a party or a combination of parties has a legislative majority the Chief Minister or Prime Minister will have a fixed term which will be the same as the term of the legislature. Removal of the Chief Minister of Prime Minister would now require a higher legislative bar similar to a Presidential impeachment. The anti-defection law becomes redundant and irrelevant since the Government no longer depends on a simple majority in the legislature.
In the absence of anti-defection laws, a cultural shift could be effected wherein legislators across party lines can think independently and come together to propose bi-partisan Bills in a manner similar to what we see in the United States. The Chief Minister or Prime Minister could then also have the additional freedom to appoint members to his Cabinet from outside the legislature thus eliminating another source of instability and dissidence.
6. Instead of "Right to Reject" allow "Write-in" candidates: The idea behind "right to reject" is that during voting there should be a option of "No One." This was suggested in a movie. In light of implementing 1-5 I don’t see any usefulness of this idea by itself. However, a better idea is to have a write-in option where people can write the name of the person (who is not in the ballot) who they want to vote for. So people can write "No one" if they desire so. Or they can write someone’s name. This is a good back-up if at last moment one of the candidate passes-away or if there is some major change (say a major movement like the current movement) and people want to vote for someone who is not in the ballot.
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August 28th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
right to recall and right to reject are very good idea,i want to see this rule as soon as possible
but sir,is it possible to merge both the house into a single house?????????in that way we can save our rastriya sampati/appx 500 crores money per year and work will be smoother like some other country
August 28th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
if possible i will meet anna hazare one day
on that day i will discuss about capital centric attitude,merge of both the house into a single house
August 28th, 2011 at 2:51 pm
ab ekbaar 1 karod rupaya pani mein geera na,reelection rit to reject mein,taab dimag thikane pe aa jayegi neta logon ki(refers to bhrast netas only)
rit to reject is a very good option,karo karo kitna kharcha karte ho karo right to reject mein ek baar reject ho gaye na,dimag aa jayega sahi jage pe…
August 28th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
If the elected representatives of any place (say Rourkela) are not indebted to their party leader then they will work for that place. Hence the idea of “primaries”. Let people decide who runs for BJD in Rourkela. Then when that person becomes MLA, he/she will work for Rourkela.
August 28th, 2011 at 10:53 pm
Like most social activists, including Mr. Hazare and his team, you too dont seem to have put a lot of thought into your proposals.
Holding of primaries by law, would be infringing upon the right of the political parties to regulate their functioning independent of external control. Not to mention racking up a massive extra cost of conducting primaries in a nation as large as India, and for hundreds of political parties. You cant just apply this to the INC and BJP after-all.
Govt. funding of election is good on paper. But in a nation where inflation remains very high, and we run massive public deficits on a regular basis, while having a tough time raising even a tiny bit of tax rates,(let alone actually collecting the tax), we just dont have the money to fund the activites of such a large number of political parties. Remember if you fund political parties out of the tax kitty, you have to treat all political parties alike. This would mean there would be no real reason why any party, no matter how small, not to contest every available constituency in the country. Tomorrow I can for a political party and contest the general election of 2014 in all 543 constituencies and receive same funding as the INC. And with the massive number of parties in this country, more than 90% of the money will actually be going to candidates who wont win. I know of a election which had more than a thousand candidates. If the govt had to fund that election, each of those thousand would have got equitable funding. Meaning 99% of the money spent would have gone to losing candidates. Thus, though idealistically a great idea, but not really economically pragmatic in a true multi-party polity like India.
August 28th, 2011 at 11:12 pm
Continuing,
Right to recall, again something really good on paper. But let’s talk about this only when we come up with a fair method to actually implement such a thing.
Direct election of CM and PM. This requires a massive change in the complete political system of our nation, and would practically need to throw out half the Constitution. Remember, in your system, what is to stop a person from one party becoming the PM, but another party securing a massive majority in the Parliament. Not something impossible, in fact very probable. For example, in the 2004 general election, there would have been a massive number of people who would have voted for Vajpayee as PM, but given a thumping majority to Congress in Parliament because they didnt want the anti-secular activities of the BJP.
In such a situation, how are things supposed to function?? How will the PM be able to carry out his legislative agenda, without a majority in the Parliament?? Will it be obligatory for the PM to chose his ministers from the majority party, irrespective of his own party??
I am sorry, but you cant really have a mixture of Presidential and Parliamentary form of govt. You have either one or the other.
And in view that this doesn’t seem implementable we need to have the anti-defection law, since candidates are elected many a times because of which party they support and who the leader of that party is. The mandate in such cases is for the party, and not so much for the candidate, and thus the anti-defection law is needed.
As for write-in candidates, why do you want this?? If a person who “wants” to be a representative has not got a ticket from any political party, he may stand as an independent. In this case, if the people were choosing the person because of his individual credentials and not his party, they will vote for him as an independent. If they were to vote for the party and not the person, they will do so.So, my point is what does a write in candidate really achieve, other than come up with a name of a person who doesnt actually want to be the representative.
August 28th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
So my point is, at least among us educated members of the society, lets really think about what we are asking for before actually doing so, which is my biggest complaint about Mr Hazare and his team.
Something which will be good for our nation, is to have a separate wing of the Election Commission, whose sole duty would not be to conduct elections, but to actually keep an eye on the workings of political parties. Especially their funding mechanisms. We should stop all cash transactions from occurring in relation to political parties and independent candidates during elections. We can have a big wing, with requisite technical support, who would have the right to requsition any reasonable amount of man-power or infrastructure or whatever it needs from other govt agencies, to keep a seriously watchful eye on the day to day working of all political parties. We need to make all funding to political parties, and ask political parties to collect funding directly from the people and institutions and not through illicit means.
Now this, I think is something that is easily implementable, something like a CAG for the political parties rather than the govt, which can function under the EC.
August 28th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
Chitta Sir,
Dont take it personally, but please dont just lift whatever is there in the US and modify it to fit India. Think from an Indian point of view, and come up with a practical implementable solution.
And the solution need to be utopian. There is no need for a revolution in this country. We may be a bit slow, but we are still marching at a good clip in the correct direction and doing so with full commitment.
August 28th, 2011 at 11:35 pm
Sorry,
I meant the solution need not be a direct jump to utopia.
August 28th, 2011 at 11:37 pm
Most of the ideas I mentioned are working in many other countries. They can be studied to come up with a workable process.
Holding Primaries: This is done in the US. So one can borrow ideas on how it is done there. It can be done in an indirect coercive way. For example, the election funding may be specified for only those parties that hold primaries.
Recall: Again is allowed in US. One can borrow ideas from there. The way it is done is via petitions. A certain number/percentage of people have to sign a recall petition for a recall election to be held.
Direct election of CM and PM: Israel has a parliamentary system. It used a direct election method in 1996, 1999 and 2001 for its PM, but abandoned it after that. May be some ideas can be borrowed from it.
Write in candidates: Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Murkowski for an example of how a write-in candidate won a senate seat in Alaska last year. There are many circumstances where a write-in candidate may come in handy.
Federal funding: Funding is not to be given to all candidates. Some qualifications may be put on them. Say they may be given to candidates of recognized parties who have won certain percentage of votes in the previous two elections from that constituency.
I think all these ideas are doable in the Indian context.
I have thought about this some. But please feel free to ask questions and express doubts. I appreciate them very much. That will help my to think more before I try to propose this to a wider audience.
August 29th, 2011 at 2:54 am
Indirectly forcing primaries is just not fair. Also, you still havent addressed the issue of cost. There are hundreds of parties out there. Not to mention the cost to the exchequer to monitor these primary elections. Be pragmatic sir. And keep in mind, we are still a very very resource tight country. Right now, there are a lot better things to spend money on.
Recall: Again, there is too much potential for abuse to using petitions. Most people in rural areas will take all of 500 rupees to sign a petition which 90% wont even understand. Thus you will need some impartial organisation under control of an organisation like the EC to do this. And how is the EC or any such organisation to decide when to go out there and ask for people to sign a petition. And how much more govt spending do you want with the extremely limited supply of resources.
Direct election of CM and PM: Beg borrow and steal some ideas, and then we will talk about them. I haven’t got any. And as it is I am fine with the leader of the Parliament being the PM.
Federal Funding: Your idea discriminates among candidates giving an unfair advantage to recognised parties (I dont know what you mean by that though) and putting all first timers at a disadvantage of funding. This is just not acceptable to me. I want a fully fair election.
As for Lisa Murkowski’s case, she had actually stood in the primaries, and thus showed an actual interest in being the representative. So even if you do have write-in candidate, should they be limited to people who stood in primaries, something which we dont have in India. Or can I write the name of any Tom, Dick and Harry on a ballot paper???
Please stop taking America as a model for elections. In my view they have the most unfair system of elections. They call themselves the oldest democracy. But to me a country which doesnt even recognise “one man, one vote” is not really a true democracy.
August 30th, 2011 at 4:04 am
I think Team Anna and other social activists need to put some more thought on electoral reforms before coming up with another agitation! I would also tend to agree that systems that work in the US might not necessarily be a good idea in India. There are a number of factors that S Pani pointed out which makes India different – cost of conducting elections in a perpetually deficit prone country, an easitly corruptible electorate (in my view this is perhaps the biggest problem) and the sheer number of electorates.