Dear Sarbajit, Dr. Arun, Agrawal ji from Transparency international india, Vivek ji, Pawan Nair and all the friends in discussion here,
It is very good discussion going on and it is showing the concern and anxiety to usher in genuine democracy in our country.
There are various methods FTPT, Run off election to achieve 50% mark, Proportional Representation. All this has been going round and round. Different countries have adopted different system of selecting representatives.
Let us give a new thinking to it and be open to a new procedure. We should not blindly copy what is existing elsewhere. Let us give a consideration to it.
Deficiencies:
a) FTPT is outdated. a candidate with minority votes manages to win the election by dividing opposition votes and feeding to it's vote bank. This is nothing but fraud in our system.
b) Run off election means re-election between two or some suggest three best voted candidates to avoid vote divisions among multi candidates and achieve 50% mark. This will be very expensive as cost of re-election in a big country like ours.
c) Proportional Representation is not a direct democracy. Political Parties to feed in candidates, what is there in peoples' hand. It may be working fine for small countries like Germany or Israel. For a big country like ours we need direct democracy from bottom to top.
d) Preferential Voting or rating candidates as First, Second or third Preferences and then doing indirect counting rounds to reach 50% mark and declare the winner. This is indirect selection as it is for our president. No good.
It will be worth while, to give a thought, as sarbajit has suggested, to why limit one voter to one vote only ? or just allow the voters to rate as first, second or third preferences and then count them in an indirect manner ? Why ?
Solutions:
1) Give people wider powers in direct democracy from bottom to top. We can achieve this first, starting from allowing the voters to select their representative by empowering them to vote for as many candidates as he or she selects. everyone so voted gets one vote each. People would like to vote for their favorites, friends, relatives and as well to the winnable good candidates without the fear of vote divisions. In this way, the candidate who secures most of the votes, the majority support, from the constituency wins the election.
This candidate (who secured max votes) is the outcome of direct public selection without the fear of dividing votes. It is as if he or she has defeated every other contestant in direct one to one election as in run off.
This form of election process and voting system is defined as APPROVAL VOTING SYSTEM. Where people are allowed to vote to candidates as many as they like. It is one time election process for multi-candidate election. There is no compulsion of 50% mark. For those who would like to go in detail study on this subject a research paper submitted at Newyork University is attached. It will be worth adopting it in our future elections. Only two actions are required.
a) Allow multiple voting and inform people about this new change.
b) Election commission will have to count more number of votes. That is the only drawback in this process.
The benefits of this will be immense as negative and vote-bank related campaigning based on caste etc will go away. Candidates will have to work for entire constituency rather than just for the cornered vote bank.
2) All the money spent in election black or white, is nothing but public money. This needs to be controlled by making compulsory state funding to meet most of the major needs of campaigning through official media under control of election commission. Parties also may be given funds directly from govt. and also all donations to be transparent. CIC decision to bring parties under RTI is a welcome decision. The political parties cannot claim they are private bodies. People of this country, have all the rights.
3) Right to recall must be given to people and not to wait for 5 years. Ways and means can be devised.
4) Right to negate all or negative voting against certain candidates is also discussed in attached paper on approval voting. It may undermine the election process. As to reduce the chances of opponent voters for one candidate may vote negatively for others. So vote or no vote in approval voting. This may be debated in future as our democracy matures further.
5) We may also have certain minimum educational criteria and ban criminal backgrounds for candidacy in election.
The above reforms will empower the voters and generate curiosity in public. They will be encouraged to come out and vote in large numbers as it will give them a feeling that their vote will not wasted. This will make our democratic process stronger.
The concern raised by Dr Arun how to bring it in force. We are discussing it on net- forum. The process is very simple but it has to be acted by election commission or will require parliament approval and then to be implemented by election commission. This forum may propose all the relevant suggestions to Law Commission, Election Commission and to parliamentarians whoever may be interested to implement it. Public awareness will also make it happen through parliament, if not now, may be in future. Certain reforms may be implemented by Election Commission also without asking the parliament.
BRIJESH KUMAR RAI
0 9619346740
Aap Navi Mumbai
On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Transparency International India <tiindia.newdelhi@gmail.com> wrote:
S K AgarwalWith all the best wishes,Dear Friends,I feel that there is a need for the Election Commission to issue orders for the implementation of its repeated recommendations for the decriminalisation of politics, as has been done by the CIC to bring Political Parties under the RTI Act.
On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Amit Mehta <amitvinaymehta@gmail.com> wrote:
We should have no reservation
MLA & MPs should be law abiding and have basic understanding of their responsibilities. They are law makers. How can a person with only brawn be a party to making laws for us. They are only suitable for Bouncer duties
Sent from my iPod
On 03-Jun-2013, at 9:00, Maj Gen Satbir Singh <satbirsm@yahoo.com> wrote:
> negative vote AGAINST a particular candidate
--Transparency International IndiaIndia SecretariatLajpat Bhawan, No 4Lajpat Nagar IVNew Delhi-110 024IndiaTel: +91-11-26460826Fax: +91-11-26424552Email: tiindia.newdelhi@gmail.com
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