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Between formal and substantive legitimacy
A comparison of two electoral systems
The simple majority or the First Past the Post system extant in India suffers from a number of flaws,
even if some of them have been mitigated by the nature of political contestation and the social
upsurge in the country. Primarily these flaws have to do with lack of substantive
“representativeness”, possible issues with accountability among others. A proportional
representation system with the provision of a single transferable vote could be a better alternative to
the FPTP system.
Arvind Sivaramakrishnan is with the editorial team of The Hindu newspaper and also teaches at the
Asian College of Journalism, Chennai.
There is no doubting the legitimacy of elected assemblies in India, from panchayats to the Rajya
Sabha. Yet the First Past the Post electoral system (FPTP, also known as the simple majority system),
which is used in all elections except those to the Rajya Sabha and the presidency, gives rise to
several questions. One is about the composition of the assemblies. Another is about the
representative character of the elected assemblies, and which could potentially weaken their
substantive legitimacy. A third is about the relation between voters and their elected
representatives. I shall explore the first two here, and will touch upon the third. With examples from
a range of countries besides India, I shall try to show that a proportional system based on the single
transferable vote offers considerable advantages over the FPTP system, which for its part creates
several problems, as follows.
Disparity between vote share and seat share
There is no direct relation between a party’s vote-share and the number of seats it wins. Assemblies
elected under FPTP do not reflect the spread or range of voter support across all parties, and
significant third or even fourth parties are severely underrepresented.
One example is that of the 15th Lok Sabha, which has just concluded its term. Figure 1 shows its
composition by party after the 2009 election. Pre-election alliances whereby parties agree not to
field candidates in particular constituencies, so that an alliance vote is not split, mean that the
figures are indicative rather than precise.
Table 1
majority
Seats
Seat Share
Vote Share
Indian General Election 2009: 543 seats in the Lok Sabha; 272 needed for a
Congress
262
48%
37.22%
Under- or overrepresentation in
+60
seats relative to voteshare
BJP
159
29%
24.63%
Third Front
79
15%
21.15%
+25
-36
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(Adapted from Wikipedia)
Graphically, the position looks like this:
Figure 1: Under - or over-representation in number of Lok Sabha seats 2009
In proportion to its share of the vote, the third party–in this case the Third Front–is substantially
underrepresented. Had seats been allocated according to vote-share, the composition of the Lok
Sabha would have been significantly different:
Figure 2: Lok Sabha seats 2009 under a hypothetical proportional system
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Congress would have had 202 seats, the BJP 134, and the Third Front 115.
The disparities caused by FPTP are even more obvious in respect of the 2012 assembly elections in
Uttar Pradesh. I use UP as an example to show the disproportionality between vote-share and seatshare in the SM system. This disproportionality is an inherent feature of the SM system. Caution
would, however, be needed in drawing any blanket inferences about the scale or extent of it in, say,
all elections in India, because pre-poll seat-sharing arrangements or similar deals are not as common
in UP as they are, for example, in Tamil Nadu. In the latter case, a claim could be made that such
deals facilitate some representation for social groups which might otherwise go unrepresented. I
address some of those issues in passages below on how a proportional system would provide a more
accurate reflection of the range of voter preferences than the FPTP system does.
As it happened, in the 2012 UP assembly elections the Samajwadi Party won heavily, taking 226
seats in the 403-seat assembly; its nearest rival, the Bahujan Samajwadi Party, won 80 seats, just
under 40% of the winners’ tally. The distribution of seats was as follows:
Table 2: The 2012 Uttar Pradesh State Election
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Figure 3: UP Assembly results 2012
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Under a proportional system, the SP would still have won, but only just, as the vote-shares show.
Table 3: UP 2012 Vote-shares by party
Secondly, the assembly would have looked strikingly different from the one actually elected:
Figure 4: UP assembly 2012 under a hypothetical proportional system
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Table 4: Hypothetical seat-shares in the U.P. assembly under PR in 2012
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The SP would have been 109 seats down on its actual performance and that would have left it 85
seats short of an absolute majority, and the BSP would have done much better than it did, winning
104 seats.
Swing in Voter Support
In the 2009 Indian general election, the Congress vote-share rose by 3.96 percentage points, but the
party gained 44 more Lok Sabha seats to finish with 262, when it had won 218 in 2004; that
amounted to 17% more seats. Similarly, the BJP’s loss of 4.88 percentage points cost it 22 seats, or
12% of its 2004 total.
Parties can win huge majorities on well under 50% of the vote.
In the U.K. in 1979, the Conservative Party won a majority of 43 seats on a vote-share of just under
44%, but raised this to a 144-seat majority in 1983, even though the party’s vote-share was down to
42.4% (Boothroyd nd).
The results of the 1997 and 2001 British general elections also reveal a striking disparity between
vote-share and seat-share. In 1997, Labour won by a huge margin, taking 418 seats, or 63% of the
659 in the Commons, on a vote-share of 43%; the Conservatives got a vote-share of just under 31%
but won only 165 seats, or 25% of the Commons; the overall Labour majority was 177. In 2001,
Labour won a 165-seat majority on a vote-share of 40.7%, but as the turnout was down from 71.5 to
59.4%, they won with the support of just under a quarter of the total electorate, or only a slightly
larger share of the total electorate than the Conservatives had got in their crushing 1997
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defeat–namely about 22%.
Winners with Small Percentages Of The Vote
In the 2012 UP assembly elections, only 16 of the 403 winning candidates got 50% or more of the
vote; the majority of the winners had less than 40%, and 117 winners had less than 30%. This is also
a feature of recent British general elections; in 2005, only two candidates gained over 40% of the
vote in their respective constituencies. Another won a seat with the votes of 18.36% of the
constituency electorate. In the 2010 election, 433 MPs, or two thirds of the Commons, did not get
50% of the turnout vote, and the current House has the lowest share of majority winners in any
British parliament since at least the 1920s; in fact a record number, 111 MPs, won their seats on a
vote-share of under 40% (Electoral Reform Society 2010).
Unrepresented voters
In effect, substantial proportions of voters in most constituencies go unrepresented. Even going by
turnout figures alone, it is not unusual for 60% of those who voted to be unrepresented, because
only one candidate is elected to represent the constituency.
‘Wasted’ votes
The votes cast for all except the winner are wasted in that they had no effect on the result, but in
fact the figure for such ineffectual votes is even larger, because a plurality of only one vote is
needed to win a seat under the FPTP system. Any more votes cast for the winner are superfluous;
one estimate for the 2010 British general election is that 71.1% of votes, or 21.1 million of the 29.7
million cast, had no effect on the composition of the House of Commons (Rallings and Thrasher
2010: 2).
Tactical voting
This is quite common in FPTP systems, with voters opting not for their preferred candidate but for an
alternative so as to keep a third candidate out. This often happens in seats which are “safe” for
particular candidates and therefore votes for all others except a likely runner-up are useless.
Targeted campaigning
This is widely used under the FPTP system, because small swings can decide large proportions of
seats. In some countries, “swing” voters form only about 5% of the electorate. In India, as
candidates sometimes admit privately, campaigns are often aimed at particular castes or
communities. Post-election policies may then favour the swing voters who may have decided the
outcome.
Targeted campaigns can be effective; in the UK in 1992, the Liberal Democrats won 20 seats on a
vote-share of 17.8%, but in 1997 a campaign targeted on the seats where they had the best chance
won them 46 seats on a lower vote-share, namely 16.8% (Tall 2012).
The representative becomes the sole gatekeeper
The fact that FPTP provides only one representative per constituency means the winner becomes the
sole gatekeeper, that is, the only person constituents can approach with their concerns. If the
elected representative belongs to a party which opposes whatever the constituent seeks (or is
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hostile to the constituent for any reason), then the voter has nobody else to approach. In addition,
voters who support a party but do not like the party’s candidate get no other option.
Parties tend to choose “safe” candidates.
This can work against women and minority candidates. Furthermore, able local party members could
be excluded from candidature because they belong to the “wrong” social group for the constituency
concerned (Beetham 2007; Electoral Reform Society 2008).
Advantages of the FPTP System
The FPTP system is simple, and with only one representative per constituency it can create a direct
link between the constituency and the representative.
The PR-Single Transferable Vote (STV) Alternative
The Proportional Representation system (based on the single transferable vote model) involves
multi-member constituencies based on the population in each constituency. Voters rank candidates
in order of preference, and the percentage of the vote needed to win a seat is either stipulated under
electoral law or calculated by a formula, one version of which is:
Q = Total valid ballot papers received
Number of seats +1
(Electoral Reform Society nd)
Q is the minimum quota a candidate must achieve in order to be elected, and every candidate who
reaches the quota on first preferences wins a seat; the quota can be under 10% depending on the
turnout. If not enough candidates reach the quota to fill the available seats, the count continues with
second preferences.
If a candidate gets more votes than the quota on first preferences, their second preference votes can
be distributed appropriately to the other candidates, in a “top-up” procedure; a weighting can be
given to these distributed votes. Counting stops when all the seats are filled (ibid.). The specific
electoral law involved decides the number of seats available; for example, the South-East England
constituency of the 766-seat European Parliament has 10 members.
The Advantages of STV
Wider choice for voters:
Parties can field more than one candidate, and in open-list systems, like that used for the European
Parliament, independents can also stand. STV gives voters more options than any other electoral
system, and parties also have an incentive to present a range of candidates in order to maximise the
number of second and third preferences. This reduces the temptation to field “safe” candidates, and
also makes negative or hate-campaigning a risk; candidates cannot risk alienating their own
supporters with attacks on other candidates, because their own supporters may vote for the others
as second or third preferences. This could also reduce the need to target a campaign at any one
group in a constituency. Furthermore, a personally unpopular candidate is unlikely to obtain second-,
or lower-preference votes, and there is no need for tactical voting to keep a candidate out, because
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the range of successful candidates is by definition wider than it is under the FPTP system.
Fixed constituency boundaries
There is no need to redraw constituency boundaries so as to maintain roughly the same number of
voters in each one. Instead, the number of representatives per constituency can be varied according
to demographic changes, and the risk of gerrymandering is potentially eliminated.
Assemblies represent the range of voter preferences
The elected assembly gives a much more accurate representation of the range of support among
voters, and in particular gives significant third and fourth parties due weight. In India, it is already
clear that even under the existing FPTP system seats are won by a wide range of parties,
particularly in elections to state assemblies, and that supporters of such parties do not go totally
unrepresented even if the parties themselves are often small and local in character, or draw most of
their electoral support from particular social groups. The advantage of a PR system, however, is that
it allocates seats by vote-share, and would therefore give such parties a share of seats
commensurate with their support among those who turn out to vote.
A possible or even likely problem for a PR system is that post-poll negotiations might well replace the
current, already complicated and sometimes fragile, pre-poll alliances and seat-sharing agreements.
Under the FPTP system as it stands, pre-poll agreements may go some way towards creating stable
or at least sustainable governments after elections; PR might simply replace one period of
negotiations with another and could even delay the formation of governments. It hardly needs to be
stated that governments at national and state level have for some decades been formed by
coalitions, with several parties often involved, and that in view of the diversity of the Indian
electorate the party system itself is fragmented though not chaotic.
This could have further resonances, particularly in view of the role of identity politics in different
regions of India. PR by itself may not be a solution to issues arising thence, because those may well
result from wider cultural issues and structural or other inequalities in the form of access to
resources, to public services such as health and education, and the like. Certainly PR is unlikely to
eliminate identity-based politics altogether, because that form of politics continues to be a powerful
factor in some regions of India. Identity-based politics is also a major feature of politics in Nepal,
where the introduction of a hybrid PR-FPTP system, possibly with a view to countering the effects of
identity politics in a very stratified society where caste divisions are clearly shown in party politics,
has not ended instability and deadlocks despite considerable improvements in the electoral process
itself (International Crisis Group 2012; Carter Center 2013). This remains the case even though
hybrid systems are not directly comparable either to FPTP or to PR systems on their own.
Where PR could, however, constitute an improvement on the present FPTP system in India is that
pre-poll seat-sharing agreements reduce the range of options available to voters at the ballot box; at
present, the relevant decisions are taken not by the voters but by the party leaderships concerned,
whether at national or state level. A proportional system would put some of the relevant power of
decision back in the hands of voters, and could at least in theory end such pre-poll narrowing of the
range of candidates available.
Far fewer “wasted” votes
Under STV, far fewer votes are cast for losing candidates or unnecessarily cast for the winner, and
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most voters can identify a representative whom they personally helped to elect. This can enhance
the voters’ and the representatives’ sense of the link between them.
Choice of representatives after an election
After an election, voters have a choice of representatives to approach, and can compare the
representatives’ responses and level of commitment to the constituency. This can provide a more
nuanced link between voters and their representatives than FPTP does, and a possible advantage of
STV for India is that successful candidates will generally not know whose votes have got them in;
they may have needed second- and third- preference votes in order to reach the quota.
The availability of comparisons between different representatives in one constituency has
considerable potential implications for India, because the Member of Parliament Local Area
Development Scheme (MPLADS) may, irrespective of the reasons for its introduction in December
1993, already serve as a way of maintaining the link between an MP and their constituency between
elections. Although the Supreme Court confirmed the Scheme’s constitutional validity in 2010, in the
respective cases of Bhim Singh and Bondu Ramaswamy, the Scheme as a whole has been severely
criticised for a range of reasons. One is that it blurs the distinction between the legislature and the
executive and also undermines elected local bodies (K C Sivaramakrishnan 2010). Another is that it
allocates funds – now Rs. 50 million a year - to each MP but with insufficient monitoring or oversight
of how the money is used. A third criticism is that the use of the money is arbitrary, erratic, and
mainly though not exclusively motivated by party-political considerations such as reelection
campaigns (Economic and Political Weekly 2009; Pal and Das 2010). In addition, MPLADS funds are
far more often spent on visible physical assets such as roads, bridges, walls, and even places of
worship rather than on, for example, ensuring that schools are properly staffed (Ramachandran
2005). MPLADS has also been defended, if indirectly, on the grounds that it is now more tightly
monitored than it used to be (Kumar 2010)).
As each Lok Sabha constituency still elects only one MP, however, it remains open to MPs to favour,
and possibly ensure, disbursement only to supporters or other groups they favour or whose votes
they may particularly need. Again, at least in theory, multimember constituencies elected under PR
could well increase the total available to each constituency simply because the constituency would
have more MPs, and could well ensure that the money could be put to a much wider range of uses
than it has generally been so far.
No safe seats
Parties need to campaign everywhere, not just in marginal seats, and representatives cannot be
complacent after being elected; they need to pay closer attention to their constituencies between
elections. Politicians do not always like this; in the Irish Republic, where STV is used for all
assemblies, they have twice tried to scrap STV, but lost in the ensuing referendum (Electoral Reform
Society 2008).
A possible end to reserved constituencies
A PR system using STV could end the need for reserved constituencies, as it would enable the
election of assemblies which represent many more sections of society than they do at present; it
could, in addition, widen the social range of those who vote. As to quotas, which form the principle
underlying reserved constituencies, various forms of them are used in over 100 countries to ensure
political representation for disadvantaged or otherwise underrepresented groups. India has one of
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the most extensive electoral quota systems in the world, but voters in reserved constituencies do not
necessarily feel better represented, because their choice of candidates is limited to the group
concerned, and because the candidates themselves are as bounden to their respective parties as
any other candidates. Furthermore, even in reserved constituencies the majority of the voters do not
belong to Scheduled Castes (Jensenius 2012: 374 and 380-81, and 2014 (forthcoming): 3-5).
STV is not difficult for voters to understand
On the evidence, voters grasp STV quickly, and do not generally engage in “donkey voting”, where
they enter only one or two preferences and choose the rest at random. In the 2012 Scottish local
government elections, for which STV had first been used in 2007, over 65% of voters in
constituencies with 11 or more candidates used three or more preferences (Baston 2007; Curtice
2012: 13-14).
The background to PR in India
In India, proportional systems have been discussed briefly; in 1928 the Motilal Nehru Committee
strongly favoured a PR system (Jensenius 2014 (forthcoming): 15-16). The colonial government
rejected PR with the racist excuse that it was too complicated for Indians; PR was also rejected in
1949, on the grounds that it was “too complicated for India” (ibid.: 26). No evidence seems to have
been put forward on either occasion. I have tried to show here that a proportional electoral system
could provide a solution to many of the problems the FPTP system generates.
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