Free and fair elections (II)

Civil liberty can be described either in terms of social climate or in terms of legal rights and safeguards. The climate of liberty is one in which a great deal of miscellaneous information about public affairs circulates widely and is discussed openly by the people. The law of civil liberty includes topics like freedom of […]

Civil liberty can be described either in terms of social climate or in terms of legal rights and safeguards. The climate of liberty is one in which a great deal of miscellaneous information about public affairs circulates widely and is discussed openly by the people. The law of civil liberty includes topics like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of public meetings, freedom of peaceful organisation, freedom from the imposition of penalties such as imprisonment or financial loss except by the sentence of a court acting on a known law. All these freedoms must, in some sense, be limited in order to prevent individuals from damaging one another maliciously and to secure the orderly conduct of business; limitations imposed for these reasons must not be used to obtain political advantage for those who constitute the government of the day.

An election is not free unless voters vote freely. Rational freedom cannot be completely achieved in practice. It remains an ideal that an enlightened citizen should decide rationally at the polls after weighing all available information, or a choice between persons or issues presented to him. But in all electoral systems, most voters vote as members of their parties, social groups or classes, of tribes, local communities; that their intellectual horizon is limited and that their social situation influences their votes.

Social bonds contend with rational choice. However, in political action, the voter should be free from certain forms of explicit compulsion. The most obvious freedoms are that his vote should not be influenced by intimidation or by bribery, that is, he should not be penalised or rewarded for his vote as an individual, apart from his share in its public consequences.

Organised force and money which can be spent freely constitute the springs of power in a society. No social act, including voting, can be completely insulated from their influence. Elections are not free if those in power manipulate them so as to perpetuate their own power. Free elections are essentially a device for the legitimation and limitation of power.

In a booklet titled: Free and Fair Elections, written by an Indian, M. Ven Katarangaiya,  the author agrees with MacKenzie that, “For the individual voter, elections are the means which enable him to exercise his share in political power, however, small it may be.”

Elections are thus at the heart of the structure and functioning of a modern democratic state and all possible measures should be adopted to make them free and fair.

According to the Katarangaiya, the democratic political system consists of several parts: people of the state, electorate, political parties, legislature, executive and judiciary. Elections may be considered to be fair only when they are fair from the point of view of each of these parts. But it is likely that a system of election which is fair when considered from the point of view of one of them may be unfair from the point of view of another part or, as shown in the case of Nigerian elections.

It, therefore, follows that no one system of election is fair from the point of view of all parts. Each system of election has certain merits along with certain drawbacks and no one system is perfect.

What has, therefore, to be done is to balance the relative merits and defects of each system and choose the one which appears to be fair on the whole in the light of the special conditions of each country.

Fairness is at its maximum when there is provision for universal adult suffrage.

Universal adult suffrage is only one of the ways in which the principle of the political equality of citizens – a principle basis to democracy – finds its expression. Others are:

(a) Equality of the value of the vote: It is not enough to give all adults the right to vote. I tis equally necessary that the vote of each one of them should have equal value. This is possible only when each voter is given only one· vote- ‘one man, one vote and when no citizen has more than one vote. If any kind of plural voting is permitted, it not only goes against the principle of democratic. equality but also defeats the primary purpose of universal suffrage. Control over government is then exercise to a greater-extent by those of whom additional votes have been given than ·by the rest of the population.

(h) Equality in the size of constituency.’ A second implication of the equal value of each man’s value of the vote is territory a constituencies in which voters vote should be so delimited that they contain, as far as possible, equal numbers of population, which under a system of universal adult suffrage, means equal numbers of eligible voters. This kind of equality of electoral districts or constituencies is necessary, otherwise the value of a vote in one constituency may be higher or lower than that in another.

(c) Absence of gerrymandering: Even when constituencies are delimited on the basis of the principle of equality, there is scope for injustice if their boundaries are so drawn as to benefit particular political parties to the disadvantage of others. This happens when resort is made to the practice of ‘gerrymandering’ by which a greater value is given to the votes of one party than to those of another. This is done by drawing boundaries of contiguous constituencies in such a way that will ensure majority support for a particular party through the process of transfer of batches of voters from one electoral district to another.

However, there may be some situations in which gerrymandering may be honest and produce certain desirable results: for example, to give representation to regions or other communal minorities in a country consisting of different communities. It may also be used to protect certain local interests, for example, prevention of a town from being merged in a larger constituency or divided between two constituencies. The same can also be used to ensure equitable distribution of seats to a party whose supporters are concentrated in certain geographical areas.

(d) Periodic revision of constituencies: There is need to take into account changes in the numbers of population and their mobility so that the boundaries do not deviate very much from the principle of equality.

Candidates and political parties

There are two parties to every election: electors or voters and candidates. If there are no candidates or if there is only one candidate, the question of election does not arise. For an election to be meaningful, there should be, at least, two candidates. It is then that there is the possibility of choice. An electoral system is ideal if it provides complete freedom for persons to stand as candidates. The more this kind of freedom exists, the more democratic a state is.

Factors that promote or restrict electoral freedom

(a) Qualifications/disqualifications prescribed by electoral law.

(b) Compulsory deposit which is forfeited if a candidate fails to secure a certain fraction of the votes polled in the constituency for which he stands.

(c) Cost of election, its planning and organisation.

Unfree and unfair elections

An election may be compared to a game which, like all games, has to be played in accordance with accepted rules. It includes a number of operations, beginning with the preparation of electoral rolls and ending with the counting of votes, the declaration of results and the adjudication of disputes, if any, regarding the results declared. There are rules in respect of each of these operations. It is only when they are strictly observed that elections deserve to be spoken of as free and fair; if they are broken, the elections become unfree and unfair.

The rules accepted may be broken. by voters, candidates, political parties, the officials in control of the electoral operations, the police or the government of the day. Alf these may, therefore, contribute to the unfairness of the elections. The breach of rules by the government of the day or by others may be the result of bribery and other corrupt and’ illegal practices and resort to intimidation or fraud: These three methods of making elections unfair have been adopted in different countries and they are prevalent, to some extent, even today. Bribes may be offered by candidates and those who campaign for them and accepted by officials, voters, middlemen of various kinds and even by some of the candidates themselves. The process may begin with the bribing of clerks who prepare the electoral rolls: the names of those who are eligible to vote may be excluded and the names of those who are ineligible, dead and non-existent may be included. Bribery may play its part in the delimitation of · constituency, leading to dishonest gerrymandering. It may be used at the stage of the scrutiny of nominations to reject some candidates on flimsy excuses or to accept some others. even though the objections to their acceptance may be of serious character. It may also influence the polling and identifying officer, resulting in the stuffing of ballot boxes with votes cast by those impersonating others. Bribery may affect the counting of votes ·and even adjudication of disputes regarding the validity of certain election results. All this is possible when officials in a country are dishonest and corrupt or adopt a partisan attitude contrary to the principle of neutrality of the civil service. It also happens when the government of the day is desperate to somehow come back to power and is in a position to control elections through its officials.

Candidates may bribe voters and purchase their votes though· this is extremely expensive in mass democracies. However, where voters are under the influence of priests, clan heads, and heads of other groups, it is possible for a candidate to influence the mass of voters by purchasing the support of a few leaders who serve as middlemen between him and the voters.

Voters may also be induced to vote for candidates who spend lavishly on entertaining them on drinks or food on a large scale on the eve of the poll. A candidate who uses motor cars or other rapid means of transportation to convey them to the polling booth can also influence voters. There are also cases where candidates are reported to have bribed their opponents to withdraw from the contest. A candidate may also resort to the same practice to ‘sponsor’ another person to stand as a candidate with a view to splitting the votes of his opponents. Governments in power may resort to certain practices which may not come technically under bribery, but really share all its characteristics; these include

(a) making grants-in-aid to, and conferring other special favours on districts included in ministers’ constituencies to secure the support of voters in them;

(b) grant of loans to private individuals from public funds to get support of group leaders and through them large number of voters.

Intimidation is another method by which elections become unfair and unfree. A voter may be prevented from voting according ‘to his own wishes, out of fear of others. The source of fear may be an individual, a group or the government of the day. A tenant-voter may be intimidated by his landlord, an employee-voter by his employer and a borrower-voter by the moneylender. Intimidation may also come from groups. A well organised body working on behalf of a candidate or party may threaten to use violence – physical or spiritual – against those who support other candidates or parties. Election meetings addressed by opponents may be disturbed and force may be used to interfere with opponents’ election campaign rallies. There may be hooligans hired to create violent and disorderly scenes near those polling stations where there is suspicion that opposition candidates have greater support. This can be contained by the police provided it does not adopt a partisan attitude and sympathise with those who use illegal force.

Thus, elections may be made unfair not only by administrators who are dishonest and corrupt, but also by the police if they ignore that their primary duty is to preserve law, order and peace.

Therefore, the fairness of elections is bound up with the honesty of the whole system of administration.

To be continued next week