India’s election process: Why does it take 6 weeks to finish?
When Indians start heading to the polls Friday, it will be just the beginning of a colossal democratic process. Not until June 4, after six weeks of voting, will India know whether its powerful prime minister, Narendra Modi, will remain in office for a third term.
Why does it all take so long? The short answer: India is the world’s most populous nation, with 969 million eligible voters. That’s more than one-tenth of the world’s population, or about four times the number of eligible voters in the next-largest democracy, the United States.
The longer answer involves India’s geography, election rules, security apparatus, holidays and electronic voting machines — a complicated choreography for a big, complicated nation.
India’s first national parliamentary elections, in 1951-52, lasted more than 120 days. In 1977, they took five days. But, generally, they have taken weeks or months, even without primary elections, because of their sheer scale.
The country has an area of more than 1 million square miles, with people in megacities, scattered throughout the Himalayas, in the Thar Desert, in forests and along the Ganges.
India’s laws also state that voters can’t be required to travel more than 2 kilometers, or 1.2 miles, from their home to get to a polling station. To make that possible, 12 million election workers will traverse the country to set up polling stations this year, sometimes by foot, bicycle, helicopter or boat — or even by horse, camel or elephant.
Some of those trips can take days. In 2019, the country’s highest polling station was more than 15,000 feet above sea level in the Spiti Valley of the Himalayas. In 2009, a team of five trekked deep into the Gir Forest in Gujarat, in India’s west, to reach the lone inhabitant of a remote Hindu temple.
Adding to the length are the wide-ranging security measures enacted to protect the vote.
In the early years of India’s democracy, clashes between supporters of rival parties turned deadly. Candidates were kidnapped. Local police officers, failing to maintain order, were accused of taking sides under pressure from politicians. Starting in the 1990s, national paramilitary forces were deployed on a large scale in elections.
India is deploying more than 300,000 members of its federal security forces to help transport voting machines and maintain peace at voting booths this year. Because they can’t cover the entire nation at once, elections are split into multiple stages as the soldiers shift from one region to another.
These safety precautions prolong elections that would otherwise take a few days, said Vikram Singh, the former police chief of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, who supervised security forces in past elections. But he said voters were safer because of them.
Violence is infrequent at polling stations today. The presence of soldiers also instills confidence in the election results.
While having multiple stages has prevented violent outbreaks, it has also prompted criticism that it makes the election process too long. S.Y. Quraishi, a former chief election commissioner, said the gaps between the phases allow more time for rumors and disinformation to spread.
Then, there are the steps taken to boost voter participation. When the Election Commission of India schedules votes, it tries to avoid India’s various public holidays and religious festivals. Harvest season, the academic calendar, exam schedules and the weather are also considered.
The careful planning has helped achieve high voter turnout. In 2019, 67% of the electorate voted in the national election, the highest participation rate in the country’s history.
One holiday during this election is Mahavir Jayanti, on April 21, one of the most important festivals in Jainism, a religion of some 6 million Indians. Another is Buddha’s birthday, May 23, when monks will carry sacred relics of Buddha on chariots, and people will decorate their homes with flowers and donate to those in need.