From the epic Mahabharata to the likes of Fast and Furious, there’s one golden rule that makes it all so fascinating- ‘The winner takes it all’. With everything on stake, the winner walks away with all the glory, showing no sympathy to the looser. Sounds fair and equal ? I guess that’s the reason our country has stuck by similar form of methods when it comes to the voting system as well.
As you all may know, India follows the FPTP (first past the pole) voting system. To quote Wikipedia, “A first-past-the-post (abbreviated FPTP or FPP) election is one that is won by the candidate receiving more votes than any other(s).” Candidates don’t need a majority to win their seat, as they are just required to get more votes than the candidate who comes second.
Both our parliamentary government and FPTP electoral system are the legacy of British colonialism; we more or less follow the Westminster Model of Governance. Although FPTP was debated at great length back in the Constituent Assembly, political parties have largely avoided debates around it as they either benefit from it already or hope to be on receiving end of it someday. FPTP works best under the two party system and is poorly suited for a time when people are embracing political pluralism, with an appetite to vote for new parties. It not only discourages people to vote for parties other than two major parties, but leads to highly unrepresentative parliaments.
For instance, let’s look at the numbers thrown by the recently concluded General Elections. While BJP with less than 31 % of the total votes cast has managed to win more than 50 % of the votes, parties like BSP and DMK who got more than 20 % of the votes in UP and Tamil Nadu failed to even open their account. Though this is neither new (Congress has been on the receiving end itself prior to 1989, 2004 etc. ) nor confined to General elections ( In the last UP Assembly elections, SP won 224 seats with 24% of the votes, while BSP just won 80 seats with 26% of the vote share), the reason behind these huge differences between the vote-share and seats is common – FPTP. However, it leads to a lot more than just the obvious disproportion between the vote-share and seats won. Let’s examine them one by one.
Unfair Representation
Unlike other systems like Proportional Representation or Alternative Voting, the metric of success in FPTP is the no of seats parties get, and not their vote share. This leads to disproportionate representation as anyone with more no. of votes wins the election, even if a large chunk of population votes against him/her. This weakens the constituency link between representatives and voters, creating highly unrepresentative parliaments. It depends less on the no. of votes it gets than on the geographical distribution of it’s support, penalizing parties whose support is spread evenly across the country.
Excludes women and minority representatives
Under FPTP, parties give tickets to only those who will be broadly accepted in the elections so as to avoid alienating the majority in that particular constituency. For instance, it’s very unlikely that someone belonging to OBC community will ever represent an upper class majority constituency. The same logic also affects the ability of women to be selected as a candidate in a male-dominated society. Thus, ethnic, religion and other minorities are less likely to be represented in the legislature. Under the current system, those belonging to backward communities get some representation in the legislature through reserved constituencies. However, that’s only a half-baked idea as representatives from those constituencies often don’t enjoy the mandate the way their colleagues from unreserved constituencies do. No doubt, a large chunk of NOTA votes in the General Elections ’14 came from the reserved constituencies.
Regional Fiefdoms
FPTP often helps politicians and parties to develop a constituency or a region as their personal or dynastic fiefdom. Raebareli and Amethi (Nehru/Gandhi), Gwailior (Scindias), Azamgarh(Yadavs) Baramati (Pawars), are some of the constituency to count as stronghold of dynasties. If a party has strong support in a particular part of the country, winning a plurality of the votes, it wins all, or nearly all, of the seats in the legislature of that area. This not only excludes the minorities from the representation, but reinforces the perception that elections and politics are defined by who you’re and where you belong to, rather than what you believe in.
Votebank Politics
FPTP encourages the development of political parties bases on a particular caste, community, ethnicity, or religion. These political parties very often base their entire campaign or policies on issues and conceptions that appease that majority of that particular community. Thus, the country gets divided into separate party strongholds like, with little incentive for the parties to appeal or work towards the interest of people outside their home region and cultural political base. No doubt, General Elections lead to Electoral Polarization so often, raising doubts about the government’s mandate in the areas where it lacks political representation. Even after six decades of democracy, we have an innumerable number of parties who rise into prominence and popular imagination by pandering to particular class/community/religion, while demonizing others.
Wastage of votes and restriction of choice.
No electoral system can ensure that all votes count. Nevertheless, FPTP wastes millions of votes which do not go towards the election of any candidate. Whiles votes for the losing candidate in each constituency do not get represented in Parliament, the surplus votes for winning candidates have no impact on the results. This often leads to tactical voting where voters vote for a certain candidate not because they want him/her to win, but because they want one of the other candidates to lose. Coupled with ‘Regional Fiefdom’, this could be particularly dangerous, as it may compel people among minority party supporters to think that they have no realistic hope of electing candidate of their choice. Not to forget, it discourages people to vote for their preferred candidate because they are bound to lose/win. Voters have often decided not to make the effort of going to the polling booth in such circumstances.
…to be continued.
Chitranshu Tewari is Outreach and Engagement Manager at I for India. This is first of two-part series on ‘First-Past-The-Post’ electoral system vis-a-vis Proportional Representation.
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