The world’s largest democratic election is well underway in India, with approximately 968.8 million registered voters. That’s almost a billion people registered to vote, roughly three times the total population of the United States. The seven-phase voting will conclude on 1 June. Vote counting will commence on the morning of 4 June, and the results will be announced by late evening on the same day.
The international community should note that conducting an election with a voter base of more than twice the population of the European Union requires significant logistical prowess.
Getting approximately a billion people registered as voters in a country with extraordinary linguistic heterogeneity and varied educational competencies was a consequence of sustained voter enumeration exercises. The Election Commission of India (ECI) set up a dedicated portal making it easy to register as a voter using the Aadhaar unique identity card. Special efforts were needed to reach out to the marginalised, such as tribal communities and persons with disabilities. There has been a significant increase in the enrolment of women voters as well. In addition, the voter rolls (polling station-wise) for all 543 parliamentary constituencies are available on the ECI website, ensuring smooth stakeholder verification.
Voting was often marred by incidents wherein miscreants used to capture a few polling stations to forcibly stamp the ballot papers in favour of their preferred candidate and scoot before the police could arrive.
To enable easy voting, more than a million polling stations (1,048,202 to be precise) have been set up. It has also meant that political parties have had a lot of work to do. Assume that a national political party decided to contest all the parliamentary constituencies. Typically, it will have to deploy at least three workers per polling station, which is a very modest number given that these workers will have to mobilise the local support for their party and also monitor the voting process in a polling station as a party representative. Three workers per polling station for one million polling stations implies, to contest all seats, a national party will have to mobilise three million workers, who have a fair understanding of the rules and regulations of the election process. So, in addition to the ECI, the political parties in India also perform a mammoth task of mobilising millions of workers and designing communication material in over two dozen languages.
A significant innovation in Indian elections is the deployment of electronic voting machines. While these “EVMs” underwent multiple testing phases, the 2004 general election and subsequent elections were completely organised using such machines. Before their introduction, voting was often marred by incidents wherein miscreants used to capture a few polling stations to forcibly stamp the ballot papers in favour of their preferred candidate and scoot before the police could arrive. While a few such incidents, called “booth capturing”, may not have altered the people’s verdict, the repeated occurrence vitiated the electoral process. The advent of sturdy battery-driven EVMs that record a maximum of four votes per minute has dramatically reduced instances of vandalism in polling stations. Furthermore, video surveillance and webcasting of the voting process at many polling stations has been introduced to deter violent actions and to increase transparency.
There were concerns in some quarters that the EVMs could be digitally tampered with. To dispel such concerns, the ECI organised a hackathon challenging detractors to prove that the EVMs could be manipulated, but no evidence was produced to show the system was vulnerable. To increase the confidence in the EVMs, a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machine was introduced, which enabled the electors to see a printout of their vote. The printouts of VVPAT machines are randomly counted to ensure that they tally with votes in EVMs. In every polling station, a mock test of the EVM and VVPAT is conducted, and only after the agents of various political parties express satisfaction with the machines’ functioning will the formal election process be initiated.
Comprehensive legislation to ensure an easy and transparent flow of financial resources to political parties in the years ahead is an urgent necessity.
Despite robust safety measures, petitions were filed in the Supreme Court of India expressing apprehensions about the possible manipulation of the EVMs. After due examination, the country’s top court declared that “the EVMs are simple, secure and user-friendly” and went on to add that “the incorporation of the VVPAT system fortifies the principle of vote verifiability.”
This is not to say that there are no challenges in the conduct of elections in India. Given that political parties have to mobilise millions of party workers and also carry out communication campaigns across the country, they require considerable financial resources. Since India does not have state funding for elections, political parties have to depend on donations from private corporations and individuals. In order to streamline donations to political parties, the Electoral Bond Scheme, which promised anonymity to donors to political parties, was introduced in 2017. However, the scheme did not survive the legal scrutiny of the supreme court. Comprehensive legislation to ensure an easy and transparent flow of financial resources to political parties in the years ahead is an urgent necessity.
The successful organisation of general elections demonstrates the Indian state’s capacity to pull off mega-initiatives if it operates in a “mission mode” – i.e., achieving a clearly defined objective in a time-bound manner. The Indian state has demonstrated a similar capacity during the polio and Covid-19 vaccination campaigns. The challenge will be to convert such mission mode abilities into daily governance at the grassroots to meet the multiple needs of ordinary citizens. The recent e-governance initiatives and improvements in ease of doing business provide reasons to be hopeful.
The experience of conducting elections in India, a developing country with remarkable diversity, merits a closer examination by other countries. It should be noted that in 1953, the ECI officials assisted Sudan in organising its first elections. Perhaps India can take a more nuanced approach to democracy promotion by sharing its experience of organising elections with various national and subnational entities in other parts of the world.
