TYPES OF ELECTION SYSTEMS

TYPES OF ELECTION SYSTEMS:

Elections have today become the most visible symbol of the democratic process. But usually in democracy people cannot directly participate in decision making. In such an arrangement citizens choose their representatives who, in turn, are actively involved in governing and administering the country. Rule by the people usually means rule by people’s representatives. But, how do the voters choose their representatives? What are the different methods or systems of elections?

You may find the answer to these questions to be very obvious. People go and vote, and the candidate who gets highest votes gets elected. That is what elections are all over the world. But this question is not as simple as it appears to us. We have got so used to our system of elections that we think that there cannot be any other way. But there can be very different ways in which people make their choices and very different ways in which their preferences can be counted.

Let us look at the few major types of election or voting systems that exist:

FIRST PAST THE POST SYSTEM (FPTP):

In a first-past-the-post electoral system, voters cast their vote for a candidate of their choice and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. The winning candidate need not secure a majority of the votes. In the electoral race, the candidate who is ahead of others, who crosses the winning post first of all, is the winner. This method is also called plurality system. 

This system is used in 58 different democratic countries of the world. This is the system which the Indian constitution has adopted for the election of MPs and MLAs in our country.

FPTP in Indian Elections:

In Indian elections the entire country is divided into 543 constituencies and each constituency elects one representative using the FPTP system and the candidate who secures the highest number of votes wins the constituency seat. 

In 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP was the party that secured highest number of seats, counting to 303 seats out of 542 seats i.e. nearly 56% of the total seats, while the vote share of BJP was just 37.4% of the total votes, which means that nearly 63% of the voters did not vote in favor of BJP.

In this type of system, the votes that go to the losing candidates go waste, for those candidates get no seat from those votes. Suppose a party gets only 25% of votes in all constituencies and all other parties get lesser number of votes in all of these constituencies, then the party wins all seats with just 25% of total vote share. This is the major drawback of FPTP system as it fails to reflect popular vote in the number of parliamentary seats. Some believe that this system is undemocratic and unrepresentative of diverse identities. In this type of system, people usually tend to choose lesser of the two evils and they often do not give vote to their first choice on the basis of candidate’s win ability and give their vote to one of the two most popular candidates as they do not want the other one to win. This also gives birth to the practice of vote cutting.

INSTANT RUN-OFF SYSTEM:    

To counter the disadvantages of FPTP system, another voting system, i.e. Instant Run-Off voting system is used in many democratic countries of the world like Australia. In this type of system, instead of voting for a single candidate, voters arrange different candidates in order of their preferences and rank them as their first, second, third and simultaneous choice for that constituency.

Let’s have a look at an example to understand this system in a better way. Suppose there are four candidates namely Narendra, Rahul, Arvind and Kanhaiya standing in the elections from a particular constituency. So now the voters have to arrange these candidates in order of their preferences and now suppose Kanhaiya gets the lowest 15% of votes, so the votes of Kanhaiya are now transferred to the second choice of Kanhaiya’s voters. Normally in the instant runoff system, candidates have to secure a majority (more than 50% votes) in order to win the constituency. If a candidate gets a majority in the first preference only then we will not take second preferences, otherwise the above method will continue until a candidate secures 50% or more number of votes.

This type of system gives voters an opportunity to vote for their most favorite candidate only and they will not have to choose between lesser of the two evils. If you want any candidate to lose the election you will just put him at your lowest preference. This system helps in eliminating the set of disadvantages of the FPTP system, and I personally think that this system can help us in replacing the ordinary FPTP system in our country for the election of MPs and MLAs. 

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SYSTEM (PR):

In a true democracy, people usually think that a candidate or party should get the respective number of seats as per their voting percentages. For example, in Israel once the votes are counted, each party is allotted the share of seats in parliament in proportion to its share of votes. Each party then fills up its quota of seats by picking up those many of its nominees from a preference list that has been declared before elections.

This system is called Proportional Representation system. In this system there could be two variations. In some countries, like Israel or Netherlands, the entire country is treated as one constituency and seats are allocated to each party according to its share of votes in the national elections. The other method is when country is divided into several multi-member constituencies as in Argentina or Portugal. This system is currently used in more than 80 countries and Belgium was the first country to adopt this system.

If the same method was adopted for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in India, then BJP would have got just 203 seats based on its 37.4% vote share instead of 303 seats it won. 

In the PR system people vote for a party whereas in the FPTP system they vote for the candidate. In PR system voters are often asked to choose a party and representatives are elected on the basis of party lists. As a result there is no one representative who represents and is responsible for one locality. This system also draws much of criticism towards itself as this system mostly leads to the formation of a coalition government that is generally considered to be a not so stable form of government. Due to these reasons countries like Germany use a mix of the FPTP system and the PR system. In India we have adopted PR on a limited scale for indirect elections. A third variant of PR, the single transferrable vote system, is followed for the election of President, Vice President, and for the election to the Rajya Sabha and the Vidhan Parishads.

Content Sources: 
Indian Constitution at Work (NCERT) and Dhruv Rathee Youtube Channel (Video:Which country's voting system is best?)