Vote with a Difference!

Vote with a Difference!

Ganga Prasad G. Rao

Come voting time, and I get disillusioned with the mockery of campaigning that precedes elections. I fear that governments are elected, not by knowledgeable citizens who consider the candidate record, party platforms and the good of the nation, but by the masses who go for trinklets and promises. An entire nation's future is decided by voters who are either as clueless and disillusioned as me or are 'in the cut' (you know, the informal 'deals' involving keys as the candidate's 'morcha' passes through your street). Our democracy has turned in to a jambooree that elects those who promise more, without any regard to issues, or the cost to the nation. What we have is not democracy; it is a 'deal' on our trillion dollar future divided in to a billion parts with a few sharing 90% of it. What lies ahead? A society divided in to classes in which the poor masses grow ever poorer even as they work harder and vote en bloc for their movie idol at the polls while the rich makes their deals behind the back regardless of who wins?

What we need is a system in which knowledgeable, educated and intelligent voters vote with the heads after making themselves aware of issues important to the immediate family, community and the nation. No, I do not mean to disenfranchise the poor masses. This is not a vote based on educational achievements. It is one of interest in the party platforms and issues of import to the nation. The question is, how do we induce this? Consider a vote on whether a nation should switch from simple majoritarian plurality elections to a proportional representation (PR) type election. An important question, one that affects the representation of many minorities, but also a complex question that requires voters to be knowledgeable. Ideally, one would like voters to learn about the two types of elections and weigh their pros and cons before they deposit their vote. But how does one differentiate between a voter who has given due diligence to the question on the ballot and one who has not? Clearly, as a nation, we would like to weight knowledgeable voters more than those who did not care. How do we do that?

Why not design a ballot that facilitates voters to determine their own weight in the vote? In the example, why not pose ten random objective questions (say from pool of hundred questions) ranging from basic to complex on the issue of majoritarian vs PR elections that test the knowledge of voters on the issue. Voters who answer these questions receive voting points on being graded by the voting machine. Voters may then deposit these voting points in favor of one (or both) the options. A knowledgeable voter might receive 8 vote points, an ignorant voter 3 points. In such an election, vote points, not votes are the criterion for determining the winner/winning option. Knowledgeable voters who made an effort to understand the issue are weighted more than the average voter. The vote-point system is entirely voluntary and provides citizens an incentive to learn about the issues and vote intelligently. It also gives credibility to the election process; the outcome of the election may be validly construed as the considered opinion of the electorate – something that cannot be claimed of the current system.

This system could be adopted for multi-party elections and, especially for issue-ballots where voters earn vote-points by answering issue-related questions and assign the same across multiple issue options or alternatives. This system is not unlike the Borda count in which voters are asked to rank candidates and assign points to them. It could be thought of as a self-selecting, self-weighting Borda Vote. It is likely to be a 'high-fidelity' means to register the preferences of candidates and at the same time give higher weight to the knowledgeable among them.

Wish I had 10 million dollars to run this experiment (No, that's not the price for the idea)!