India was one of the few countries to choose democracy and universal adult franchise right at the time of her independence. In the 74 years that have passed and the several elections conducted throughout the Indian State, there has always been a peaceful transfer of power - the primary purpose of conducting elections in a democracy. Yet there is a scope for improvement. It is time to reflect - has choosing an electoral democracy with the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system served us well? Can we do better? Not much attention has been paid to the voting system we have chosen. Many countries have experimented with new voting systems that address the limitations of FPTP and suit their context. This article intends to provoke the reader to think of an alternative to FPTP - Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). 

Limitations of FPTP

The FPTP voting system is not designed to select the candidate with majority support. Rather, a candidate needs to gather just one vote more than the closest rival to win the elections in the FPTP system. Consequently, in a multi-cornered election, the mandate gets fragmented and the chances of the elected candidate being voted by a majority of the voters decreases. This shapes the voter preference and political strategy of the parties. Voters prefer to vote for the candidate who has a ‘winning potential’. The voter may have a higher preference for a less popular candidate. However, the voter does not want to ‘waste’ his/her vote for a ‘losing candidate’ and consequently votes for the less preferred but higher winning potential candidate. This is also called ‘tactical voting’. The FPTP voting system also has an impact on the party campaign strategy - parties often resort to negative campaigning/personal attacks to cut the votes of the other parties.  This can degrade the election discourse that only highlights the limitations of opposing candidates. Most importantly, the FPTP system incentivises a divisive strategy. Parties focus on dividing the constituents along various identities - caste, sub-caste, religion, geography, gender, language etc. - and claim to represent one or more of them. Fault lines are sometimes also created and cracked open. The hope is that the constituents a party claims to represent should beat the closest rival at the ballot box.  

An Alternate System - Ranked-Choice Voting

With a view of these shortcomings of FPTP, several countries have tried alternate voting systems. Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) is one of them that is suitable for the Indian context. In RCV, voters don’t vote for just one candidate, but can rank multiple candidates according to their preference. The result is counted not just based on the first preference, but their other choices can also play a role in the decision process. Voters are allowed to rank their preference ordinally as 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so forth (typically up to 5 ranked preferences). While counting the votes, a candidate with the majority (more than 50%) of first-choice votes wins the election outright. If no candidate is the first choice of more than half of the voters, then all votes cast for the candidate with the lowest first choices are redistributed to the remaining candidates based on who is ranked next on each ballot. If this does not result in any candidate receiving a majority, further rounds of redistribution occurs. In each round of counting, one candidate gets eliminated and votes are redistributed till a single candidate with more than 50% vote emerges. 

Why RCV is better than FPTP for India

RCV addresses the disadvantages of FPTP we highlighted above. It does well on both fronts - captures voter preferences exhaustively and is relatively very difficult to manipulate by the political parties as compared to FPTP. 

In RCV, voters need not resort to tactical voting. They can vote for different candidates in order of their preference. Political parties would want to promote themselves more than obstruct others since parties would like to be listed as the voter's 2nd or 3rd preference if not the primary choice. The narrative changes.  Unlike in FPTP, parties will focus more on wide-ranging inclusive topics than drive a narrow agenda to attract a broader voter base. 

Challenges 

While RCV seems to address the concerns of the FPTP system, it has some limitations.  RCV might be difficult for voters to understand. It assumes that voters have evaluated the various candidates and their positions before making a preference order (though they can vote for just one candidate).   

Supporters of the FPTP system claim that votes getting split is fair, and the result obtained with FPTP is justified. Some others also claim that 'negative campaigning' should not be a dirty word.  They assert that negative campaigning educates the voters about the pitfalls of the other parties rather than being framed by the polished images as an outcome of positive advertisements.

Along with resistance to these matters, India might also face some practical challenges in its implementation. In the biggest democracy in the world, it might get a bit tedious to carry out this whole process on such a massive scale. The EVMs will need to be reprogrammed to deliver RCV. The process of counting votes will get lengthier and challenging. With the system getting more elaborate and compounded, the chances of corruption also increases to ease the complexity. Therefore, for the transition to the new system voter awareness and education campaigns will be needed.

Roadmap for Implementation

The exact effects of changing the voting mechanism and challenges of implementation will be realized just when it is piloted at a micro-level. The RCV mechanism can be employed in local elections, e.g. gram panchayat, municipal council elections or zila parishad elections, for a pilot study. Researchers can analyse the change in the dynamics of the election process, the psyches of voters and political parties, and the nature of campaigns upon introducing the RCV mechanism in the Indian context. Based on the research, the election commission, political parties should consider the pros and cons of the exhibited consequences of the pilot study and decide whether to take its implementation on a larger scale.

Conclusion

India adopted the simple FPTP system at the time of independence.  However, now that other countries are moving away from the FPTP due to its recognised limitations, it also seems worthy for India to attempt an alternative for her own elections. Although the advantages that RCV offers over FPTP needs validation through a pilot study implementation for the Indian context, conceptually, they look quite promising. RCV captures voter preferences in a more complete manner and positively transforms the nature and agenda of political parties. This change can enhance people’s faith in the electoral process and have a healthy impact on the society and Nation. Given the exciting potential RCV has, it is an experiment worth piloting before a full scale roll-out. 

 

Shobhit Mathur is the founding dean of Rashtram School of Public Leadership. Manan Gandhi is a research associate at Rashtram.  

 

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