The title refers to the general election that is underway in India, which was the subject of a NYT article last week. As the reporter states, democratic voting is simple: we count one vote per person. But how we make it possible or desirable for eligible voters to cast that one vote and how we make sure each vote counts can be complicated and also say a lot about a country’s commitment to the most basic principle of democracy.
There is no other country that can exemplify the challenges of democratic voting as dramatically as India. First, an incomparably large number of voters, expected to reach 900 million in this year’s general election. Then, the expanse of the country and its diverse, often difficult, terrain of cities, jungles, mountains and remote areas. To make voting possible at this scale, the election that started on April 11 will last until May 19. Voters will cast ballots in one million polling stations which will be staffed and aided by 12 million officials. Ballots will be cast electronically using voting machines (many of them portable) and verification will be ensured by a voter-verified paper audit trail that generates paper copies of the ballots.
What should impress us all, though, is the extraordinary efforts election officials take to enable Indian voters to exercise their right. They will climb (figuratively speaking) mountains, cross deserts, and reach deep into jungles to seek out voters. To this effort, they will put to use 700 special trains as well as boats, airplanes, camels and elephants!
If India is the world’s most populous democracy, America, we like to claim, is the world’s greatest or best functioning democracy. Qualifiers like “greatest” or “best functioning” can mean different things to different people. But here, I am more interested in looking into how well we succeed in regards to our engagement in democracy as voters. We first need to understand that elections are not the same as voting. We may participate in election rallies, phone banks, flyer distribution, debates with friends and strangers – all that as part of the election process – and yet unless each one of us is empowered and willing to cast a vote, elections may not reflect the true choices of the people.
We also need to distinguish between votes cast as percent of eligible voters (i.e., age voting population) and votes cast as percent of registered voters. By the first measure (% of eligible voters) the US ranks only 26 out of 32 developed countries that are members of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development). Thus, in the 2016 US elections, the voting rate was 56.7%, compared to voting rates over 75% in Belgium, Sweden and Denmark. A different picture emerges, though, when we count votes cast as percent of the registered voters. Now the US climbs to the top of the rankings side by side with Belgium and Sweden. Thus, in the 2016 elections, 87% of registered voters did vote. By the way, the same measure stands at 66.4% (in 2014) for India. However, the higher percentage of registered voters that vote is only the result of the fact that registered voters are a lot less than eligible voters. For example, in 2016, there were 255 million eligible voters in the US but only 157 million were registered to vote. In general, it is estimated that at least 25% of eligible voters do not register to vote across various election cycles. Therefore, the US has a serious problem of unregistered voters in addition to the problem of a relatively low turnout rate.
The reason that a significant percentage of eligible voters do not register to vote in the US is that registration is left up to each individual as a matter of personal responsibility. Other countries, though, take the view that a well-functioning democracy requires the broadest possible participation of citizens in the voting process. Thus, Sweden and Germany, among other countries, automatically register voters once they reach the eligibility age. Other countries (including Australia and UK) apply aggressive campaigns to turn eligible voters into registered voters. In contrast, a Pew survey found that 62% of eligible to vote Americans had never been asked to register by a state agency or private organization. And among those who had been approached, only 16% had been asked by a state agency, like the Motor Vehicle Department of their state.
So, we naturally need to ask why state authorities take this nonchalant approach in this country. I suspect it is less out of respect for personal responsibility and a lot more because lower and, especially demographically, selective registration fits the interests of politicians and their parties. Besides convincing eligible voters of the merits of their proposals, politicians and parties also seek to maximize the number of registered voters that are likely to lean their way and minimize the number of registered voters that are likely to favor the rival side. One way to achieve the latter result is to make registration process costly, tedious, or onerous by choosing the registration criteria that are most likely to hinder likely voters of the rival side. It is not a secret that such registration obstacles usually target African-Americans and immigrant citizens. That’s why, each election cycle, we have numerous court fights regarding the enactment of criteria that one political side finds harmful to its registration efforts.
Regrettably, politicians and parties go a step further in undermining voting participation. They engage in various unethical and dirty tricks with the goal to dissuade voters of the opposite side from voting. Such tactics went into overdrive in the presidential election of 2016, in many cases with the help of foreign trolls. Partisan gerrymandering practices, registration obstacles, undermining the willingness to vote, and onerous conditions in the exercise of voting itself are serious symptoms of our declining standards in the practice of democracy. Despite our praise of elections as celebrations of democracy, our system does a darn good job to let as few as possible celebrants in.
Even without going into the equally challenged state of ballot counting and verification in a country far advanced in technology, we should all take a pause and ask ourselves: “do we want to serve our narrow political interests or the democratic norms? As we reflect on that question, let’s try to envision an Indian election official riding an elephant into a remote hamlet so that his or her fellow citizens are able to exercise their most basic democratic right.
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