One man, half vote

I gradually realised the reason for all this attention. If a candidate wins a slim majority in California and grabs its 54 electoral votes, he is one-fifth of the way to the 271 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency. Thus while California is the nation’s most populous state, accounting for 11 percent of the US population, its electoral votes are an even greater prize – 20 per cent of the necessary votes. Going by the classical theory of representation this appears unfair. It violates the fundamental principle of one man, one vote’. Clearly, this struck me as an anomaly of the American political system.

In contrast, undivided UP with its 85 seats in the Lok Sabha (almost one-sixth of the 542 seats) has one-seventh the population of the country. Since we do not follow the winner-take-all (WTA) system of voting as practised in the American Electoral College, even a slim majority for a party in UP will in no way fetch all the 85 seats for it. India fits the textbook model of representation — proportionate to population — better. The one man, one vote’ principle makes the system fairer.

Since each state’s electoral votes in the US are awarded on a WTA basis it makes it extremely difficult for third-party or independent candidates to win any votes in the Electoral College. Other than the highly publicised TV debates that do not include third party candidates such as Ralph Nader, the American system of representation itself is heavily biased against minority candidates. The Indian representational system does not suffer from any such inbuilt bias. No doubt candidates from smaller parties, be it Gujral or Gowda, Chandra Shekhar or Morarji Desai, end up becoming prime ministers at least in a coalitional arrangement.

In the US, there are altogether 538 electors, with each state getting one elector for each representative and one for each senator. Washington in the District of Columbia gets three more electors. To sum up, the prevalent electoral rule favours the larger states. In fact, going by the 1990 census, a strategic candidate only needs to win 11 of the most heavily populated of the 50 states (i.e., a little over one-fifth) in order to win the presidency: California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, either Virginia or Georgia and Florida. In fact, it is precisely the 25 electoral college votes of Florida that have become the big battleground in Election 2000 for Gore and Bush.

Ironically a US President can be elected without winning a majority of the popular vote. In fact, a president with a minority of the popular vote has won the Electoral College 15 times in the past, including twice when Clinton won. In 1876, Republican candidate Rutherford B Hayes lost the popular vote by several percentage points but still managed to win the presidency by winning the electoral college vote over Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden. If Bush were to become the President this time, it would be a repeat of history since he is behind Al Gore in popular votes.

Why does a system which symbolises the statue of liberty continue to have such inegalitarian biases. There are several reasons. First, the American system evolved in the 18th century, a century marked by slavery, racism and patriarchy. It needs to adapt itself to the realities of the 21st century. At one time it even tolerated a judicial clause by which three white men’s evidence was considered equal to that of five black men. Similarly women did not have the right to vote for a long time. In the Federalist Papers both Hamilton and Madison go at length to defend elitist principles of Republicanism which is based on the fears of populism.

The equal representation of all states in the unique American upper house, the Senate (another violation of the one man, one vote principle) is not a feature practised in India. Faced with our tremendous cultural diversity we carried out a rare innovation (like Canada) of combining a parliamentary system with federalism.

Unfair representation is highlighted these days by the presidential impasse in the US. Among other problems, bipartisan bickering in the Congress often leads to passing of no legislation for months. A split vote, in other words a Democratic presidency and a Republican Congress, can lead to a gridlock. Despite a whole gamut of checks and balances, the US model is prone to deadlocks and logjams. It is a similar situation in the states. In California, for instance, it is not uncommon to have the budget delayed by afew months with a bipartisan standoff resulting in no salaries. The clones of the American presidential system in the various Latin American polities have proved a worse disaster.

Political instability is the name of the game in the presidential system much more than in parliamentary systems. Yet, whenever we are faced with a typical problem of political instability, a bogey of interests emerge to argue the virtues of the presidential system. The US elections this year should put an end to all such naive speculation. It is high time that the Americans learnt at least the lessons of fairness in representation from us.

Political instability is the name of the game in the presidential system much more than in parliamentary systems.