
How India’s massive 2019 election will work - yarapavan
https://qz.com/1570687/how-indias-massive-2019-election-will-work/
======
pradn
The mechanics of the actual election seem to be decent enough. But there is
rampant vote buying in many areas. I've personally seen liquor handed out for
votes. Money, clothing, and alcohol are commonly used to purchase votes in
many rural areas. Last I heard, it cost something like like 1000-3000 RS
($15-40) per head in rural Andhra Pradesh.

FT article from 2014:
[https://www.ft.com/content/a9d35821-f2f1-3479-8082-2ce1e6fa7...](https://www.ft.com/content/a9d35821-f2f1-3479-8082-2ce1e6fa79cf)

~~~
elpool2
How do the people buying votes make sure that the voter is voting the way they
want? Do they not have a secret ballot?

~~~
Dravidian
I've seen religious tactics applied effectively for this,

The potential voter is asked to swear over a religious artifact after
receiving the money (bribe).

e.g. For Hindu voters, a plate with oil lamp, an idol, a mixture of auspicious
powder is used.The voter should swear over it that they will vote for that
particular candidate.

Elections are the main reason, politicians ensure religious superstitions
flourish in India inspite of evil practices like casteism, sharia etc. Even
when India's constitution is godless & secular (amended).

Thanks to really noble people behind India's constitution.

~~~
KorematsuFred
As an Indian who has worked extensively in multiple elections have "been there
done that", let me tell everyone that above comment is completely ridiculous
and devoid of any truth. It is not even a fringe phenomenon.

Let me answer the original question.

No one buys a vote in return of goodies. They buy "loyalty" vote is a
consequence of that.

Each candidate appoints a booth level worker first. The booth level worker is
in the inner circle of trust for the candidate and booth size is typically
<1400 voters. Entire history of voting patterns of each booth is available
publicly. A worker may handle multiple booths too.

The booth worker being a local already knows which way the winds are blowing
and how to change their directions. For the poorest of poor he might offer
cash and alcohol. For others he might offers government jobs, fake degrees,
sex, licenses for businesses, shut eye approach towards illegal construction,
protection from abusive husband and so on.

Once the voter buys in, he has to show absolute loyalty towards this
candidate. He is expected to appear in rallies, at local speeches and even
argue in favor of the candidate in market. Each person has enemies and in case
Mr X appears to be saying unfavorable things in public someone will inform the
booth level worker who will then show up at his house with goons.

You also need to understand secondary consequences of this sort of signaling.
It means if a person was seen so actively working for Candidate X and if
candidate Y wins, Candidate Y will not even help this person in future because
obviously he was seen with Candidate X so often. (This can literally ruin
people's lives from what I have seen). This also means there is zilch
advantage for the person to backstab candidate X at the voting booth. (If you
are married to her , you might as well have sex with her sort of thing). It is
this phenomenon that eliminates back stabbing voters.

In my personal experience this soon reaches the level of lassie fair
economics. At some point it pays lot more to simply sabotage the booth agent
of your opponent instead of actually buying voters. If your prospective booth
agent betrays you, you lose hundreds of votes. Just like voters even the booth
agents are greedy. The candidate gives him lot of cash to distribute but
sometimes he just keeps it to himself.

Part of the reason why BJP has done well in recent times despite spending less
money than Congress is because BJP relies on its sister organization RSS which
is a cadre based organization. They have pre-vetted individuals at every booth
level whose loyalty is beyond doubt. The Congress party on other hand mostly
relies on mercenary concept. They do a primary round of bidding where people
who want their tickets tell how much money they can spend. The highest spender
will then be given the ticket to fight elections. He has to donate 10% upfront
to the party chief.

Note:

In my personal experience, with the exception of certain regions in most
regions elections are pretty fair and are not determined by money. At least
when it comes to Federal (central) elections. All candidates are aware of this
fact. You might be able to gain additional 3% votes by sheer cash but you need
to employ various other tactics to get more votes. As the middle class in
India becomes larger and more aspirational the bids for votes change too. Even
the poorest of poor now has electricity and hence correctly values 24x7
electricity above Rs 500 once in 5 years.

~~~
mindentropy
> At some point it pays lot more to simply sabotage the booth agent of your
> opponent instead of actually buying voters.

Could you please elaborate how after the booth agent is sabotaged, he changes
the voters mindset or vote? I believe it is very difficult to actively do it
i.e. tell the voters to vote for the opposite candidate. At the maximum it
will be very passive i.e. he keeps the money to himself and simply not go to
voters to work for his candidate.

~~~
KorematsuFred
Booth agents are sabotaged very early in the campaigning process. The most
common scenario is where the booth agent will secretly contact the opposition
candidate and continue to pretend to be loyal to his own master while
deliberately feeding incorrect information. In many cases he will simply not
spend the cash that was given to him to distribute among voters. In some cases
he will deliberately ignore visiting the swing votes.

~~~
mindentropy
Isn't this very risky? There is a high chance that he will get caught. A smart
politician would do recce to see if the money is distributed. What would
happen if he is caught?

------
sremani
The real heros are Indian Election Workers and security personnel who travel
to towns and villages far away from their homes and set up the elections and
many times sleep on the floors of schools and offices to conduct these
elections.

India could never be authoritarian for one simple reason its too damn diverse,
a country that is contradictory to every definition of nation state exists
because it has adopted democracy how ever imperfectly and mastered elections.

~~~
nindalf
> India could never be authoritarian

Don't get complacent. The man in power has never lost an election, so I don't
know if he knows how to lose with grace. What's more, he has _very_
authoritarian tendencies, like intimidating the press[1].

[1] - [https://thewire.in/media/punya-prasun-bajpai-abp-news-
narend...](https://thewire.in/media/punya-prasun-bajpai-abp-news-narendra-
modi)

~~~
KorematsuFred
The Wire is a left-wing publication that routinely engages in propaganda.

The current government has not brought in any new laws or regulations on
press. India never had the journalistic freedom like in west.

The opponent of current PM is a political royalty of India. They are the ones
who dont know how to live without power. Indira Gandhi suspended Indian
democracy and assumed the titled of dictator for few years when she lost an
election. She also jailed many people including many political leaders that
are still active today. Her son engaged in forced sterelizations and another
son brought in a bill to kill the press called "defamation bill". Luckily it
was repealed.

The current PM by far is a strict improvement on anyone we has seen in past.

~~~
unmole
> The current PM by far is a strict improvement on anyone we has seen in past.

The current PM came up with demonetization. Arguably the single worst idea in
India's economic history since Tuglaq's copper coins. This is despite the
central bank strongly advising against it. The RBI's governor even quit
because of the government's meddling.

The current government decided to suppress inconvenient NSSO jobs data leading
the head of the National Statistical Comission to quit in protest of the
politicization of the institution.

The current government tried to take over control of independent tribunals by
a backdoor 'money bill'. Thank goodness the Supreme Court put an end to that.

The central government acting through its appointed state governors has
repeatedly tried to snatch power from opposition parties with democratically
won majorities. The judiciary had to step in time and again to stop this.

The current government has lowered the standard of public discourse where any
criticism of the government is immediately labelled 'Anti-National'. The
government has shamelessly politicized military actions and is now resorting
to jingoism to boost it's electoral prospects. Hell, a former chief minister
was caught on camera admitting as much.

The authoritarian tendencies of the dear leader are as clear as day. But sure,
please tell me how Modiji is bringing us all Achhe Din. Oh, wait. Even the BJP
has stopped talking about Acche Din now.

~~~
KorematsuFred
Modi had many misses demonetization and GST being top ones in my opinion.

But as far as authoritarianism and tyrannical attitude is concerned Modi does
not even belong in the same league as congress party.

Congress party has done everything you have listed and lot more. Tell me if
any Modi move comes even half close to what the Congress party did.

1\. Took over 25% school capacity from all private schools and enforced severe
restrictions in the form of RTE. This alone has closed down 10k + schools in
India.

2\. Created 100% exemption for Christians and Muslims run private/publicly
funded schools from above point 1. They even went to amend Indian constitution
(93rd) to create this blatantly bigoted scheme.

3\. Congress create NGT National Green Tribunal. A body that reports,
investigates and delivers punishment for anything related to environment,
their decision can not be challenged in any court. Congress party has made
millions through this body. I remember in a particular case where NGT fined
this gentleman around Rs 3 crores for building water canals on his own private
property. When his representative asked the NGT body "where is the evidence
that I have done any harm to environment?" NGT simply stated that they need
not provide any evidence at all.

> The central government acting through its appointed state governors has
> repeatedly tried to snatch power from opposition parties with democratically
> won majorities.

That is however is not at all true in even a single case. Using governors as
thugs was Congress party's modus operandi and now being normalized. BJP
government has not snatched any state from a majority party ever, not even
once. Congress party on other hand has used their appointed Supreme Court
judges to snatch Karnataka from BJP.

I am no fan of Narendra Modi, I personally dislike him for failing to undo the
damage Congress party has done to Education related laws. But putting him in
the bracket of "authoritarianism" is nothing but elitist snobbery. It is
something that a convent educated cheese eating wine drinking socialite from
Delhi or South Bombay might easily buy into but not an actually grassroot
level worker.

------
yarapavan
More details on the logistics behind the Indian election -

With a population of 1.3 billion people and a voting age of 18, an astonishing
900 million Indians are eligible to vote. This is nearly double the entire
population of the 28-country European Union, and triple that of the United
States. Often, the electorate of a single state in India is as large as that
of a country.

The ECI deploys over 11 million civilian and security personnel — greater than
the population of 42 of the 50 states in the US— to ensure the elections run
fairly and smoothly.

Source: [https://medium.com/@sarveshmathi/logistics-behind-the-
worlds...](https://medium.com/@sarveshmathi/logistics-behind-the-worlds-
largest-election-7a944b76aa4f)

------
spectramax
I recently watched an independent film called “Newton” [1] about Indian
democracy and voting process. It was amazing and I highly recommend it.

[1] [https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6484982/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6484982/)

~~~
calvinbhai
this movie is well made, and is available on Amazon Prime (in the US.)

------
edoo
I turned down a job to create a rigged voting system in an African 'republic'.
It was for something regional, not the majors. They wanted the voting system
to have two lights outside the voting center, one for each candidate, where
the brightness of the light indicated the number of votes for each, with the
ability for remotely overriding and setting the brightness for each light.
That was an eye opener.

~~~
osrec
Interesting that they wouldn't just display the number of votes. By using
brightness, they transform their method of cheating into something much more
difficult to quantify.

~~~
edoo
I thought the lights were just ridiculous.

------
osrec
"Better" is difficult to measure. I used to think that US elections are a lot
less corrupt than Indian elections, thus are probably "better". Now I'm not so
sure!

The sheer scale of an Indian election is rather remarkable though, as is the
melodramatic buzz it generates throughout the country. It's an administrative
marvel, especially when you consider the strangling bureaucracy that is rife
in most Indian government departments.

~~~
cies
> I used to think that US elections are a lot less corrupt than Indian
> elections, thus are probably "better". Now I'm not so sure!

I've read some thing about the primaries in the last US election, especially
in the dems party. Wow, that was corruption to a whole new level. Also these
primaries are (by design) super important to the US elections; too important
to be so "unregulated" if you ask me.

~~~
throwaway123156
Primaries are not elections. They are private intra party affairs.

Also, as far as I am aware, other than 1 district in Brooklyn whose votes were
not counted in time in the Dem primary, there was hardly anything "corrupt"
about either party's primary (and even that district went towards the winner
anyways, and wouldn't have made a difference if every vote went in the
opposite direction).

While not corrupt, or illegal, caucuses in US primaries are extremely
undemocratic instruments, however, that is the exact opposite of what is
considered the best method of voting in a democracy (secret ballot).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Primaries are not elections.

Yes, they are.

> They are private intra party affairs.

That wouldn't stop them from being elections, but primaries are public affairs
carried out by the State. (Caucuses are more like you describe, but even they
often have state involvement.)

> caucuses in US primaries

Caucuses are not in primaries, they are an alternative to them.

~~~
DFHippie
> Caucuses are not in primaries, they are an alternative to them.

Are you familiar with U.S. elections? Caucuses are very much part of the
primaries. They are how certain states perform their primaries. Iowa, for
example.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Are you familiar with U.S. elections?

Yes. Intimately.

> Caucuses are very much part of the primaries. They are how certain states
> perform their primaries.

No, caucuses are a (formerly, universally used—primaries are a newer thing)
alternative to primaries still used in a minority of states (and sometimes, by
some parties but not others in a state) to select delegates to Presidential
nominating conventions.

Because primaries have over time displaced caucuses as the _main_ candidate
selection mechanism, and because the campaigns are somewhat nationalized, and
because there isn't a handy name for the whole process, the whole national
process of selecting such delegates is sometimes sloppily referred to as “the
primary” of each party.

------
gfosco
Well yeah, they have Voter ID.

------
gvand
But what about the candidates?! Try to top those and then we'll talk.

~~~
kobiguru
The system is in place. Things change slowly in a democracy that has its flaws
as well as benefits.

Faults of a slow democracy are easy to see but benefits are not so much. You
see move fast break things is not how you deal with people's life. The system
is in place and it has immense constitution powers granted. Once the literacy
increases so would the quality of candidates. If you look at ADR databases and
compare it with regional GDP as well as educational levels you would see a
clear trend towards a net positive.

The slop isn't as high as we would like it but it's positive and that's how
democracies work.

------
adictator
The world's largest democracy & arguably the best.

Almost anything that India does, even marginally successfully, is done at a
scale that is incomparable to anything in the world.

~~~
tracer4201
By what metric are they the best democracy?

I visited Hyderabad and Chennai for work in 2018 for about three weeks. It’s
certainly not a place I would want my family with me. The food in Hyderabad
was amazing though, I’ll give them that.

~~~
calvinbhai
Are you sure you are not conflating the meaning of the word "democracy" to
different issues, including quality of life, climate, infrastructure etc?

There's no way you can evaluate how good/bad democracy is in any country, in 3
weeks.

~~~
tracer4201
I didn’t make any statement on their democracy. I questioned by what metric
are they the best and I commented that Hyderabad and Chennai are not a place I
would take my family.

Not sure how you took that to be any kind of judgement on India’s democracy.

~~~
calvinbhai
> By what metric are they the best democracy?

I'm not sure what else you meant by that.

------
harichinnan
This is a puff piece to legitimize use of EVMs. India uses EVMs, a closed
source device made by a secretive Japanese manufacturer. The government claims
the device is "hack" proof. They stubbornly refuse to conduct an open
hackathon to find vulnerabilities.

~~~
nerdponx
_Though Indian voters also cast their ballots on electronic voting machines,
they are much simpler and arguably more reliable than the ones used by their
American counterparts. Unlike the machines in America, which are manufactured
by private companies, differ in each state, and need proprietary ballot paper,
the ones used in India are made by two government firms, and are battery
operated—a key detail in a country that struggles with power supply. (Plug-in
machines caused problems in the latest US election, as some workers forgot to
plug them in). Each machine holds up to 2,000 votes, so large-scale hacking is
highly unlikely._

~~~
throwaway123156
It's good to see an audit paper trail is generated by these machines.

If EVMs are to be used, an auditable paper trail is necessary.

Hopefully the Election Commission will audit a representative sample of
locations to prevent any irregularities.

~~~
kobiguru
There is nothing to hack to meaningfully affect an election outcome at the
national level. Plus Election Commission of India takes no chances around it.

