Presidential Election Procedure — India vs America
The two largest democracies have distinct procedures for electing their heads. First, see the Form of Government
Let’s begin with the Supreme power
The 2 political parties unlike 2598, nominate their democratic and republican candidates in a “democratic” way. The indirect election is the only uncontentious common thing we can refer to in these two nations’ elections. Though may not be appealing to the fans of Louis Napoleon, this type of election kept the monarchy at bay.
The indirect election has the middle tier between the people and the contestant. It constitutes:
The 435 though capped by law is not divine like 786 yet won’t change. The lower house of Congress (akin to Lok Sabha of Parliament) with electors varying as in California: 55/39 million to Wyoming: 1/0.5 million is to achieve “equal representation of the states”.
Let’s look at its “friend” (Neither NATO nor OECD nor UNSC permanent associate … maybe just QUAD informal partnership)
Both the nations adopted bicameral legislature making things easy to compare. Let’s compare the terms
The Electors here include the state legislative members on top of the Parliament members. This prevents the contestant from the dominating political party in the parliament to be the default candidate. So how to blend these votes from Center and State. What about considering the value of Electors vote instead of the vote itself? This would achieve uniformity in the scale of representation of different states whereas in the USA the state legislators have no voting.
Perhaps, the fondness of mathematics led the constitutionalists to choose complex formulae that equate the value of votes of Member of Parliament (Center) and Member of Legislative Assembly/Council (State).
Let’s look at some real stats considering the 2017 election; it constituted MLAs from 28 states (4,120), MPs (776), and even Union territories (UT).
Before getting into deeper math a brief respite with this info bytes
Break over…. since India is a multiparty system (in practice)there is a possibility for more than two candidates to contest and it’s optimal to choose Proportional representation by Single Transferrable Vote System (PR-STVS) as compared to Ballot system.
For example, if Varun, Arun, krish, and Ram contest then the voter has to give preference by marking 1, 2, 3, 4 against each candidate.
Let’s say these are the results of the contestants. The numbers are the votes gained by each as first preference
If it’s a regular ballot system, Varun is the winner, however in PR-STVS one has to attain the electoral quota to become the winner
Since everyone counts lower than the quota the iteration begins
Step1: Eliminate the lowest voted person Arun
Step2: Now the 5000 votes which have the first preference of Arun are distributed to the rest where second preference is marked: let’s say 500 to Varun; 2000 to Ram; 2500 to Krish so now the numbers are
Since no one has achieved this value the process continues
Step 1: Eliminate the lowest candidate
Step 2: Now the 12500 votes of Krish is distributed by adding the number of votes in third preference to the rest as follows
So finally, Ram who has 20250 is the winner
Finally, both countries with the current electoral systems are able to manage the transfer of power without blood. With a polling percentage of around just 65%, the two nations certainly have areas for improvement.
