Electoral systems

How votes are counted matters. Different rules can favour big or small parties, majorities or minorities.

First Past the Post (FPTP), the method our Constitution prescribes for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections:

• The country is divided into constituencies (543 for the Lok Sabha); each elects one representative; the candidate with the most votes wins.
• The winner needs only more votes than any other candidate, not a majority (50% + 1). Like the runner who crosses the winning post first, this is also called the plurality system.
• So a party's share of seats can differ sharply from its share of votes. In the 1984 Lok Sabha election, the Congress won 415 of 543 seats (over 80 per cent) with about 48 per cent of the votes, because many of its candidates won with less than half the votes in their constituencies; votes for losing candidates 'go waste'.

Proportional Representation (PR):

• Each party gets seats in proportion to its share of votes, filling them from a list of candidates declared before the election. Voters usually vote for a party, not a candidate.
• In some countries, such as Israel and the Netherlands, the whole country is one constituency; others, such as Argentina and Portugal, have multi-member constituencies. In Israel, a party needs at least 3.25 per cent of votes to win seats; PR there lets small parties in and often leads to coalition governments.

Single Transferable Vote (STV), a complex variant of PR, is used in India for the Rajya Sabha, the Vidhan Parishads, and the President and Vice-President. For the Rajya Sabha, each state's MLAs are the voters; they rank candidates by preference.

• A candidate must reach a quota: (total votes polled ÷ (number of seats + 1)) + 1. First-preference votes are counted first; if seats remain unfilled, the lowest candidate is eliminated and their votes pass to the next preferences, until all seats are filled.
• Example (new): if 3 seats are to be filled by 240 MLAs, the quota is 240 ÷ 4 = 60, plus 1 = 61 votes.

Why did India choose FPTP?

• Simplicity: easy to understand even for voters with no special knowledge; STV would be hard to run in a country of India's size.
• A clear choice of candidate, not just party, and a known representative for each locality whom voters can hold accountable.
• Stable government: a parliamentary system needs a majority, and FPTP usually gives the largest party or coalition bonus seats; PR might not produce a clear majority.
• It encourages different social groups to come together to win locally, while PR might encourage each community to form its own nationwide party.

In practice: FPTP has been simple and familiar, helped large parties win clear majorities, and discouraged parties drawing votes from only one caste or community. FPTP usually produces a two-party system, but India first had one-party dominance with many small parties, and since 1989 has seen multi-party coalitions, which let new and smaller parties compete despite FPTP; in many states a two-party contest is emerging.