An agenda for serious election reform efforts in IndiaBy Dr Anupam Saraphi

Overview

This paper outlines the principles for election reforms and explores reform ideas and questions in the context of these principles. It addresses some of the system reforms required to make elections in India serve the purpose of allowing every member of the Electoral Collegeii to deposit its vote, as a proxy to participation in Governance, to a candidate of choice and be assured that the system is accountable.

The paper is a contribution to the current public consultation process for Election Reforms undertaken by the Law Ministry of Indiaiii. It is meant to serve as a first step to a serious discussion and reform effort and is not a complete or final word on the actual reform.

The purpose of election reforms

The Law Ministry of India has announced a public consultationiv based process for Election Reforms and its committee for Election Reformsv has released a background papervi, which deals with a number of issues concerning Criminalization Of Politics, Financing Of Elections, Conduct And Better Management Of Elections, Regulating Political Parties, Auditing Of Finances Of Political Parties, Adjudication Of Election Disputes and Review Of Anti-Defection Law. However, it appears that the purpose of the reform agenda is to address symptoms indicated by some of the political controversies around the election process and not the election system itself.

If the purpose of elections is to ensure every member of each Electoral College can deposit (or withdraw) its vote, as a proxy to participation in governance, to a candidate of its choice and be assured that the system faithfully accounts for it, the purpose of an agenda for serious election reform should be to examine ways to address the lacunae in accomplishing this objective.

Addressing a few political controversies alone cannot ensure every member of each Electoral College can deposit its vote to a candidate of her choice with fidelity. Nor can it ensure that the vote can work as a proxy to participation in governance.

Reforming the election system to meet the purpose of having the election system should be the only valid reason for pursuing a serious election reform agenda.

Principles for a reform agenda

No reform should be ad hoc. It should not just address the symptoms of the day. Reform should be based on enduring principles that can only be rooted in the purpose of elections. Enduring principles for the reform should therefore be:

1. Every stakeholder community and geography must find participation by inclusion, not exclusion of the other.This principle would require that the election system allow every stakeholder community an equal opportunity of representation in a geographical constituency by including their participation, not excluding the participation of other stakeholders. It would also require that every geographical region have an equal opportunity for representation by including its participation, not excluding the participation of a region.

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2. Ensure the vote will be a better proxy to governance.This principle would require that the voter is able recognize and take action on the deviations in the development agenda or ideals promised to the voter. It would also require that the vote is not converted into a proxy for the formation of a government but rather for governance.

3. Ensure the ability of every voter to count and be counted.This principle would require that every voter have ample opportunity to vote. It also requires that every vote cast by the voter would continue to matter.

4. Ensure the ability to vote to candidate of choice.This principle would need to provide for flexibility to voters to select, choose (and vote for) candidates of their choice.

5. Provide a means to account for every vote and ensure the fidelity of each vote.This principle would require that it is possible to ensure each vote to a candidate is genuine. It would need to ensure that each voter’s vote actually reached the account of the candidate to which it was deposited. It would need to provide a means to audit and certify the fidelity of the polling process.

The election system

The election system includes the various elements such as the offices for election, an electoral college, candidates for election, procedures for election, the rules for capturing the vote and counting it, declaration of results, and certifying the fidelity of the elections.

The Constitution of India Part I and XV as well as The Representation of The People Act, 1950 define some of the parts of these elements in Indian elections. The symptoms in the form of political controversies around the election processes highlighted (as also those missed) by the Law Ministries Background Paper bring out the failure of the legal system to address the elections holistically and ensure the purpose of elections is met.

Offices for electionvii

If the vote is to act as a proxy to governance it must have continuity to represent a feedback of performance of the office for election. In a representational democracy based on offices for election corresponding to geographic constituencies, the vote is a proxy to the governance and development of the constituency. If the purpose of geographic representation is to ensure the balanced development, the geographies administrative boundaries must coincide with constituencies and constituencies must not morph with time.

If there is no correspondence between administrative boundaries and constituencies, or that the composition of a constituency changes from one election to another, the ability for the vote to act as a proxy is destroyed. Both scenarios make development data corresponding to constituency very difficult to monitor and at worst impossible to compile. This destroys the vote as a proxy to governance.

By a restructuring of constituencies periodicallyviii,ix this is exactly what happens. This has created lack of correspondence or one-to-one mapping between the office of election and the administrative units used by the administrations at the council, state or national level. Neither is the data of development kept at the constituency level, nor is action or planning done at the office of election or constituency level.

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It is no wonder that we experience a complete disconnect between the election and governance – for which the vote was a proxy. It is hardly a surprise that 6 decades of governance with such disconnect between the offices for election have resulted in serious imbalance in governance, development and environmental sanity that continue to plague the country at the national, state or local levels.

In offices for election that are based on representation of stakeholders rather than geographies it is important to represent every stakeholder to issues, sectors or domains. The “upper houses” or the Rajya Sabha in the centre and Legislative Council in the State, constitute such bodies of representatives that are not geographical, currently do not allow for representation of all stakeholders. The electorate of these offices is not the different stakeholders but rather representatives of geographical constituencies. This simply allows for more representation to the majority rather than allowing different perspectives and all stakeholders to be represented. To balance representation of the people it is, therefore, these bodies and not the geographical constituencies that should represent stakeholders communitiesx,xi.

The first candidate for a serious reform agenda would be to examine how the vote can remain a proxy for governance. How can the feedback from voters about the governance of their constituencies and stakeholder perspectives not be destroyed by mixing geographical and stakeholder representation unfairly, administrative mapping, and delimitation exercises? How can the offices for election serve as the unit of governance and development?

Electoral College

The election law does not consider the citizens eligible to vote as one single Electoral College. Instead of defining criteria to decide which offices and which constituencies a voter may vote in, it defines voters for each Election Office or Constituencyxii,xiii,xiv. As a result separate rolls are created and maintained at the local, state and national level for the same Electoral College responsible for electing people to different Election Offices.

There is no provision to ensure that each member of the Electoral College will be automatically and fairly included onto the Electoral Rollsxv,xvi. In the event that a person is kept out, there is little recourse to ensure remedyxvii. In fact the law explicitly disallows appeal and court interference. This seriously compromises the principle to ensure the ability of every voter to count and be counted.

One of the major problems lies in the fact that the generation of the electoral roll ignores the existence of the citizen data in the National Census, a door-to-door survey of the entire population of the country. Instead of issuing a Election Card to each member on the Census indicating the year from which they may cast votes, the machinery creates lists based on periodic drives for inclusion of names.

Electoral Rolls are not searchable to find if a persons name exists and even less so to find duplicate names. Nor is there any exercise to merge and consolidate the different lists into a single common list. The Electoral Rolls do not map onto street maps – despite the fact that such are easily possible in today’s information age.

As can be expected from these procedures it is very difficult to ensure genuine voters or single registrations.

While the Electoral Rolls are accessible freely to the Candidatesxviii they are not to the members of the Electoral College. Strangely the privacy of the voter is of no concern

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to the law. This is like making the names and addresses of a bank – or its branch – available to business interests. Easy access of such a list to Candidates is one of the biggest factors increasing election crime and the cost of elections.

In six decades why has the law not provided for making a consolidated demographic and development profile of the constituency be accessible – or even mandatory – instead of the detailed names and addresses of voters in a constituency?

If voters are the stakeholders for whose participation the elections are held, why do the various sections of the Representation of the Peoples Act treat them with such unimportance? In fact the regional consultations on Election Reforms almost completely ignores the voter by holding consultation in only 6 metros across India at a notice of a few daysxix.

Candidates

A candidate is the basis for creating representation. In the Indian system you do not elect candidates to represent the country, but you elect them to represent your constituency. Besides, candidates can represent a constituency where they are not domiciled. How can there be geographical representation and what meaning to constituencies have if the candidate is not domiciled in the constituency?

The widespread dismay at the quality of candidates participating in various elections reflects a failure of the laws to attract candidates that inspire trust, understand local environmental and developmental problems or have visions beyond themselves.

Why has the publishing of such affidavits and criminal records not made the Offices of Election less criminal or less wealthy? Would there be need for publishing criminal records or affidavits declaring wealth if the candidates were from the constituency and lived there?

The procedures for nomination of candidatesxx fails to inspire anyone form the Electoral College to seek candidacy save those with moneyxxi or muscle. In an information age where technology is able to capture votes and count them, is there a reason to restrict the number of candidates or even require a formal nomination?

Currently there is no effort to allow the voter to even nominate a candidatexxii of choice. The nomination proceduresxxiii,xxiv,xxv,xxvi,xxvii,xxviii act as a filter rather than an enabler of choice to the voters to nominate candidates. This violates the principle to offer candidates of choice to the voters. What if anyone could simply nominate a candidate?

Must Political Parties usurp the geographical or stakeholder representation by converting the candidate into a numbers game to form a government (and render the candidate, geographical or stakeholder community representation irrelevant for representation of the people, governance or development)? Can it not be left to the parties to inspire national policies that local (independent) candidates may support?

Representing a constituency is a life-long job requiring selflessness and devotion to the people of the constituency. It is important to create mechanisms to attract those who seek to serve the community and not themselves or business and political lobbies. What can be done to address the conflict of interest of parties or its members who have business affiliations or funds? Is it worth registering candidates – rather than political partiesxxix - and providing special funding for their participation in peoples environmental and development activities?

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What if the Election Commission were to create a website for each constituencyxxx? What if that site can provide a webpage for each registered candidate to host an agenda for the constituency and the project details of the peoples environmental and development activities she is participating in? What if the ECI would print and mail the resume and information on the peoples projects that each candidate from the constituency is participating in to the voters in that constituency? Will this not bring down the cost of elections to a very small fraction of the existing cost?

Procedures for election

The law requires the Election Commission of India (ECI) to supervise, direct and control the electionsxxxi. It is not mandated to conduct the elections. Consequently, it out-sourcesxxxii the election to the State (or in-turn to the local government). Those who win the elections control the machinery conducting the next electionsxxxiii.

Would it be more appropriate to create a Public Institution of the ECI to conduct the elections? Or perhaps outsourcing the elections to NGO’s or even businesses whose exclusive activity is the management of events?

The task of supervision too is outsourced to the various governments for whose offices the election is being held. There is no member of the ECIxxxiv who directly supervises each constituency. The parties that conduct the election also certify the procedure and freeness or fairness of the election.

What if each constituency could seek out local people who volunteer the conducting of elections under supervision and direction of the Election Commission?

The procedures for election need to be simple and a way of enforcing the principles outlined for reforms. Currently the procedures are merely administrative mechanisms to conduct the elections.

The rules for capturing the vote and counting it

Currently there is no means to capture or record the legitimacy of a votexxxv. Did legitimate voters cast the votesxxxvi? Is the vote assigned to a candidate legitimate – was it meant for that candidate? This is similar to an anonymous deposit of cash into a bank account. This would be regarded as unacceptable in an age of “Know your customer” (KYC) to prevent money laundering, terrorism and anti-national activities.

Further it is not possible to verify if the same person cast more than one vote. While some may argue that voting ink to prevent this, the absence of a means to capture the unique vote transaction associated with a unique voter and its audit destroys the ability to certify legitimate and single votes.

This also means that the voter has no receipt of the valuable vote she has deposited into a candidates account. There is neither any evidence of having cast the vote to a candidate of choice nor of the vote having been countedxxxvii. This means we have to make a huge leap of faith in the system and believe that the vote somehow went to the candidate of choice and remained there.

A receipt is a confirmation, a proof of counting. It reinforces the value of the vote. It gives every voter the feeling relevant.

The opponents of receipts have argued that they open up vote commerce: exchange of money for votes. Others have argued that voting process without receipts is also open to proxy by commerce.

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In the world of business lobbyists and interest groups often pool votes of people who would want them to vote on their behalf and often use them to take over companies or change their directions. The compulsions of the voter and a lobbyist may be diverse, but the common equation is the value of the vote. A lobbyist or an interest group looks for controlling return on investment- the voter relinquishing the vote to the lobbyist for an advanced dividend for giving up the right to participating in the governance.

The practice of surrendering the vote to an interested group is sustained as long at it yields a better dividend upfront than the dividend from the better governance later. A risk averse voter prefers the dividend upfront. A dividend payment upfront (or a

iAnupam Saraph is a governance and systems expert, an accomplished innovator, a systems thinker, environmentalist and an advisor to top leaders. ii While the Constitution in India refers to the voters to the State Councils and the Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates by this term and the voters to the other elections simply by describing the "electoral roll", the phrase “Electoral College” is used here to describe the set of eligible voters who choose among candidates for a particular office. iii http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/ereforms/ereforms.htmiv http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/ereforms/minutes.docv http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/ereforms/core_committee.pdfvi http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/ereforms/bgp.docvii Part I of the Constitution of Indiaviii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (11)ix The Constitution of India Part XV (329) (a) the validity of any law relating to the delimitation of constituencies or the allotment of seats to such constituencies, made or purporting to be made under article 327 or article 328, shall not be called in question in any court; (b) no election to either House of Parliament or to the House or either House of the Legislature of a State shall be called in question except by an election petition presented to such authority and in such manner as may be provided for by or under any law made by the appropriate Legislature.x The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (9, 10)xi The Constitution of India Part XV (331, 333)xii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (13D, 14, 17, 18)xiii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (16)xiv The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (19, 20)xv The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (21, 23, 27)xvi The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (22)xvii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (30)xviii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (78A)xix http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/ereforms/core_committee_oo23dec10.docxx The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (32, 33, 33A, 33B, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39)xxi The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (29B, 29C)xxii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (38)xxiii Part I of the Constitution of India, The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (3, 4, 5)xxiv Part I of the Constitution of Indiaxxv The Constitution of India Part XV (330, 332)

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payment in lieu of the vote) often results in the exclusion of future dividends for the voter group that has given up its right to a future dividend.

A nation elects its government for the dividends its citizens may receive from the management by the new "board". If the selling of a vote serves to be more beneficial to the voters than the management by any government, it may well be the lesser evil to voting without receipts.

However if all the principles of reforms are in place there is little need to resort to selling a vote or even buying one. With candidates of choice and better ability for the vote to be a proxy to governance and not government formation, there may be little need to indulge in vote-commerce.

The law already violates the voter privacy by making voter lists available to candidates. The receipt offers the privacy of the vote to the voter, not the candidate. Like the banks receipt on deposit of money where the depositor can choose to share information of the deposit with the world, keep it secret or destroy it, the voter can choose to share, keep secret or destroy the receipt.

Will the good system issue a receipt to the voter certifying the vote went to the candidate of choice? Can the privacy of the receipt be the choice of the voter? Will blind faith no longer be thrust down the voter in the name of secrecy?

Perhaps the well-designed Voting Receipts will be two-part print-outs from the EVM. Part I could be dropped into a ballot box by the voter after confirming it documents the correct vote. Part II could stay with the voter as proof of the transaction.

Perhaps a unique Vote Number printed on both Part I and Part II could identify each vote. This number could be generated by the EVM through an encryption algorithm using the Voters ID, the Polling Officers ID and the EVM ID. Each Vote No could then be associated with a unique Vote. It would then be possible that any Vote Number would be verifiable as being valid or for the vote it stores by logging in at an ECI website for example https://eci.gov.in/verifyvote. This verification site could then report invalid for invalid Vote Numbers and the number of the Candidate for a valid vote. It should be possible to do this without yielding the identity of the voter.

The voter could also be able to log-in to an ECI site for example https://eci.gov.in/myvote with the voterid and date-of-birth (that they can reset to

xxvi The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (9A, 9B) also defines the Power of Election Commission to determine the constituencies to be reservedxxvii The Constitution of India Part XV (334)xxviii Chapter IX A (171A)xxix The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (29A)xxx The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (39A)xxxi Part XV (324)xxxii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (19A)xxxiii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (Part IV)xxxiv The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (13A, 13AA, 13B, 13C) Chief Electoral Officer, District Election Officer, Electoral Registration Officer, Assistant electoral Registration Officerxxxv The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (60)xxxvi The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (61, 62)xxxvii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (64, 65)

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another password) to check details of their vote as they appear on the Part II of the receipt with them.

It should be possible to use Part I of the receipt to confirm the vote by printing the Candidate Number and details (name and party) as well as the location where the voter cast the vote. The Part II of the receipt could be used to provide everything on Part I (except the location map), and a reminder of how the vote may be verified anytime.

An algorithm that uses the Candidates Voter ID, the District Election Officer’s Voter ID could be used to generate a 16 digit unique Candidate Number that can be verified to be genuine. Each Candidate Number could be used to translate back to Candidate Name and Political Affiliation.

It should be possible for all EVM’s then upload their data to an encrypted database that could provide information to anyone through secure access to at the ECI websites for example https://eci.gov.in/verifyvote and https://eci.gov.in/myvote.

Such a system will enable check if all votes to a candidate came from legitimate voters without revealing their identity. It would also make it possible to report duplicate votes and negate them.

The voting process in 2009 deployed 1.025 million EVM’s. Each EVM was shared with between 1 to 3,840 votes (the maximum capacity of each machine). As the machine can work at most 5 votes per minute (300 votes per hour), it can register at most 2,400 votes in the 8-hour polling periodxxxviii.

Given the voters time preference to vote, procedure of activating the EVM and the time required by each voter to recognize the button corresponding to their choice, understand the process and vote, in practice the EVM works at about 1 vote per 1-4 minutes. This means the EVM can cater to at most 15-60 votes per hour or 120 to 480 votes in the 8-hour period. This translates to 123 to 492 million votes.

Given that 417,156,894 voters cast their vote in the 2009 elections this translates to an average of 407 votes per EVM. This suggests that the deployment of EVM’s is one of the key reasons for a Voting Divide. A large chunk of the 42% of eligible voters are not able to cast their vote.

With about 40 million young Indians becoming eligible to vote every year would mean that 200 million new voters have to vote in the same time. The Voting Divide will only increase.

There are over 500 million cell phone subscribers in India. Remarkably more than the people who cast votes in the 2009 Lok Sabha Elections. Cell phones now cost under 1,000 Indian rupees and service providers offer free life-time connectivity with 1 paisa per second plans. This has revolutionized the Indian communications. Both social and business practices have adapted to this unprecedented and rapidly expanding access to hand-held compute power.

The cell phones offer the opportunity to become the ubiquitous EVM in the hands of each voter. With the freedom to vote from anywhere, can each voter can pre-register a handset and cell number to serve as his or her EVM? Can both Service Providers and mobile phone manufacturers tap into this opportunity and provide the required interface to capture votes into a national database? Can API’s to generate Vote

xxxviii The 2009 Lok Sabha Polls took place between 8 AM and 4 PM.

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Numbers and Receipts be provided by the ECI on its servers for anyone to design EVM’s that capture votes and upload to their database during the voting period?

Such Service Providers could be required to generate a mechanism to capture Part I of the voting receipt in their database and make it accessible to third party Open Audit in the same way as outlined above. Each Service Provider could be required to guarantee to its subscriber the Terms of Privacy and Security.

The Reserve Bank of India has recently launched a mobile payment platformxxxix. The ECI can similarly invest in a mobile-based voting platform that is inclusive, available ubiquitously and provides a good transaction trail. This would allow the ECI to play its role to supervise, direct and control the electionsxl effectively.

Declaration of results

Currently the names of the winners are announced by the ECI on the day of the results – weeks later the ECI releases the elected representative data and the votes polled dataxli,xlii. There are no audited results, only unaudited ones. There is no single channel for declaring results, there are many – different pages on ECI’s website, press releases, interviews and declarations by returning officers.

The declaration of results has to provide adequate reassurance that every voter counts and has been counted. It has to provide adequate reassurance that every vote is accounted for and ensure the fidelity of each vote.

If results are declared by the Returning Officer (or an outsourced Agent for the ECI) there should be a third party audit required before the ECI certifies the result to be true and correct (or an audited result).

If each constituency website is hosted by the ECI the detailed result of votes polled by each candidate from the constituency can be declared and made available by the ECI on this website on the official day of declaration of results. This can become the single point of declaring results. This will encourage transparency, as it will offer the voters the single official place to compare the various candidates in the election fray.

Certifying the fidelity and contesting it

Although voting is a blank cheque to trillions of rupees of spending, a license to control the civil liberty in a country, a framework that pushes thousands of decisions to every citizen it is perhaps the most un-challengable and un-audit-able process in a countryxliii,xliv,xlv,xlvi. There is no way anyone can verify the claims of those who conduct and control the voting process and certify them to be true and correct.

xxxix http://www.npci.org.in/home.aspxxl Part XV (324)xli The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (66, 67, 71)xlii The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (75A)xliii Part I of the Constitution of Indiaxliv Chapter IX A (171B, 171C, 171D, 171F, 171G, 171H, 171I) Bribery and undue influence in elections, Personation at elections, False statement in connection with an election, Illegal payments, in connection with an election, Failure to keep election accounts. Also defined by The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (Part VII)xlv The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (8, 8A, 9, 9A, 10, 10A, 11A)xlvi The Representation Of The People Act, 1950 (58, 58A)

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There is no way that anyone can follow the transactions of voting and certify that a candidate did indeed get as many votes as counted from legitimate sources. There is no way anyone can certify that the vote cast by anyone actually ended up for the candidate for whom it was destined. There is no way anyone can certify that every voter counted at the polling booth was actually the one who was entitled to vote.

Arguably the process of audit requires a transaction trail. A publicly audit-able process would require a public access to the trail. In an age of open-source it is surprising that we opt for closed-audit systems. Would you trust the financial institution that audits itself?

In a voting process a transaction trail would require each vote be identified with the voter, location and time. This trail would ensure that every vote could be tracked to the source. If there is a transaction trail, it becomes impossible to add or remove votes that do not come from a voter, a location and during a legitimate period.

The important part of a legitimate transaction process is the ability to certify that all transactions were fair and genuine. In finance it is accepted best practice to have third-party audits to certify that transactions are according to law and genuine.

An open-audit framework would be an important safeguard for the voting process to reinforce confidence of the voters and candidates in the outcome. Not only does the voter need to know she counted, but the candidate also needs to know the votes received by all candidates were indeed a mandate of the people.

Designing a process that would allow anyone concerned with the voting process to track one or many transactions, while respecting the privacy of each voter, would be essential part of increasing trust and thereby participation. Thus while the process would enable anyone to check the legitimacy of each vote or of all the votes received by a candidate, it would not reveal the identity of the voter who cast the vote.

As a first step to an Open Audit the Bar codes of Part I Receipts, dropped by voters in the polling box at the booth, can be read into an encrypted database that can register the Vote No and the associated Candidate No. This process can be carried out by an agency independent of the one counting votes stored in the EVM. This will serve as a double entry accounting process.

A publicly available Poll Audit software program ( for example at https://eci.gov.in/AuditTheElection) can compare the Candidate No registered against each Vote Number in the Receipt with the EVM and generate a report of invalid Vote Numbers, invalid Candidate Numbers, Vote Numbers in the EVM Database but not in the Receipt Database, Vote Numbers in the Receipt Database but not in the EVM Database and discrepancies the Candidate Number registered in the two databases for each Polling centre. In the event there are no discrepancies, it can certify the Votes as valid.

Anyone could be granted access to the Poll Audit software to ask for reports of illegitimate Vote Numbers, illegitimate Voter IDs by each Polling Centre or by each legitimate Polling Officer ID. This would make the fidelity of every counted vote completely transparent and verifiable.

Those against a transaction trail argue of such trails making the ballot free of secrecy. Those for the trail argue about the inability to distinguish legitimate votes from illegitimate ones resulting in a possible compromise of the polling process.

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Whatever the merits of secrecy, it certainly fails to enthuse confidence about the voting process and in voter-based democracy. What is the difference between the acts of a dictator and a secretly elected ruler? Whatever but a leap of faith can stand witness to the democratic election of the ruler?

Rabindranath Tagore dreamt of a land where the mind is without fear and the head held high - will a secret democracy ever lead us into this world where everyone can walk fearlessly and honorably with the choices they make about the way they may be ruled?

It is interesting that a secret Sunday confession does not rid the world of sinners. Would a Sunday of public celebration of virtues possibly make the world a better place?

They say secrecy is the difference between a marriage and an affair. Hold anything secret and even a RTI may not be able to get you justice. The hallmark of civilization is when dissenters can walk fearlessly in a world of pluralism. Are we that far away from a civilized society that we have to fear a dissenting vote? Isn’t the essence of democracy the right for the perspectives of every stakeholder community and geographical constituency to be counted?

The men of character in every civilization rarely hid their true opinions behind a faith-based, unauditable systems, secret ballot or diplomatic guile. No land of secret decisions ever yielded a world without fear. Certainly not one where you may hold your head high. Such a land cannot have free knowledge; there would be a price for any information, perhaps that of forfeiting democracy itself.

Conclusions

It is evident that the Indian Law relating to the elections falls seriously short serving the purpose of allowing every member of the Electoral College to deposit her vote, as a proxy to participation in governance, to a candidate of her choice and be assured of the systems fidelity at accounting it. Different elements of the election system require serious reforms in order to ensure that the elections remain relevant in governance.

Not only must the reforms ensure coherence in administrative and representational units, it must also be based on principles of inclusion not exclusion. Reform must ensure the vote will be a better proxy to governance. It must ensure the ability of every voter to count and be counted. It must ensure the ability to vote to candidate of choice. It must also provide a means to account for every vote and ensure the fidelity of each vote.

It is hoped that this paper will stimulate much discussion and thought and improve and add to the reform of elections in India.

Election reform can yield us the world Tagore dreamt about - where the mind is without fear and the head held high - it can leapfrog the world’s biggest democracy to being the worlds greatest nation. Let us embark on a journey to build our nation together. Let us celebrate the diversity of our votes!

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