#HowAshokaVotes: An Exhaustive Guide

By Deep Vakil, Undergraduate Class of 2020

If you ask me how my foray into student politics began, you might be amused to know that I actually wanted to join the Election Commission. I only considered political parties as the vehicle of my participation in campus politics after my application to join the Election Commission was declined in my second semester. Nonetheless, my interest in electoral systems lives on, both in my private life, as well as academically. An electoral reform referendum at Ashoka, then, is the perfect opportunity to share my learning. After a brief overview of each system and an exhaustive list of differences, I have tried to look at the reform from various standpoints: as voters, parties, independents, and the like. I would recommend the eager reader to skip to the final section, knowing that the claims therein are substantiated in the main body. I also undertook a comparative analysis of the three systems using the outcomes of the last three elections under each one, which can be found in the appendix.

The three systems under consideration are:

1. Single-Transferable-Vote Proportional Representation (hereinafter, STV-PR) which is the current system at Ashoka;
2. Multi-Member First Past The Post (hereinafter, FPTP), similar to the system followed in India, UK, and the US; and
3. Modified Swiss Proportional Representation (hereinafter, Swiss PR), which employs a modified version of the system followed in Switzerland, but with dual-EQ.

In the table below, I have listed, exhaustively, and as objectively as I can, every single difference between the three systems and how they work.

STV-PR

This system ensures proportional representation: the seat share of a party will be based on their vote share. What is unique to it, however, is that it ensures PR while respecting the principle of one-person one-vote, which also implies a simplicity to the system that neither of its counterparts can boast of. This is the only system that does not lead to any wastage of votes, i.e. every vote cast has an equal potential of influencing the outcome. However, this simplicity comes at the cost of voter choice, in terms of not allowing cross-party votes. As it follows, parties don’t need to make an effort to differentiate themselves in this system per se, because the ballot itself forces the voter to pick one over the rest. Finally, perceptually, a voter may think that by voting for an independent over a list, they are ‘wasting’ their vote, if they do not understand the concept of transferable voting.

FPTP

The promise of this system is the maximisation of voter preference, and maximise it does. Now, each voter can cast upto 15 votes for every single candidate they wish to see in the House. However, as a tradeoff, it kills, not two, but four birds with one stone: proportional representation, list voting, one-person one-vote, and NOTA, virtually making every candidate an independent candidate. PR gets replaced by plurality, which means the 15 most popular candidate across the field will get in, and can leave little to no room for representation from the electoral minority. The removal of list votes from the system means the voter needs to know all the candidates that they want to vote for by name. And should any voter choose not to exercise any of their 15 votes, it automatically leads to those votes getting discarded, i.e. a partial ballot will have lesser influence over the outcome. NOTA also becomes another type of wasted vote in this system, for it stands to have no bearing on the election whatsoever.

As the only system without proportional representation, there is a good chance that lists get a much bigger or smaller share of seats than their share in the total votes. This is in fact a regular feature of FPTP, with the best case being our 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in which the BJP won more than 50% seats even as it got less than a third of votes (also attached the outcome of 2017 UK general elections below.). The only difference is, while FPTP conventionally carves up the electorate into multiple constituencies that send one candidate to the elected body each, this version of the system makes the entire student body one single constituency which sends the top 15 candidates to the elected body, thus exacerbating the issue at hand. In my sample count, I also notice that the vote share of individuals declines significantly under this system. Here, I am inclined to believe that this problem will be minimised when the system is implemented, for two reasons: first, that independents are no longer competing against lists for votes, but in fact just need to find a place in one of the 15 votes that a voter can cast; and second, votes for individual party candidate will also deflate as they will no longer be able to piggyback on the party wave or receive the benefit of competing on the same list as more popular candidates. Nonetheless, the playing field for independent candidates gets more competitive, because as opposed to competing against 3 or 4 lists for votes, they are now contesting as one of over 40 separate individuals.

I have to admit I was quite surprised at the AUEC’s decision to even put this as one of the systems on the referendum, because the world over, people are moving away from FPTP. In Canada alone, there have been 7 referendums to switch from FPTP to STV or PR in some form. It is also worth noting that the Electoral Reform Society of the UK (the oldest such organisation) famously called FPTP “bad for voters, bad for governance, and bad for democracy.”

Swiss PR

This system is a hybrid of FPTP and Proportional Representation, meaning that it maximises voter choice by allowing to cast upto 15 votes for who you want to see in the House, while also ensuring that the seat share corresponds to the vote share. What differentiates it, then, from STV-PR, is that it gives up the principle of one-person-one-vote to provide for cross-party voting; it also retains two features of STV-PR that FPTP does not: voters can vote for lists as a whole, and NOTA still has an impact on elections. The option of list voting itself is another addition to voter choice, in that it now offers a broader option for those voters who do not wish to cast all 15 of their votes to specific individuals, which also reduces discarded votes. The dual-EQ system helps ensure that list voting does not disrupt the playing field for independent candidates, who cannot get list votes, as a separate EQ is calculated for individuals after subtracting the list votes from the total votes. Upon resignation, the individual candidate’s votes are deducted from the total votes and the seat share is reconfigured with the lower EQs. In my sample count, I notice that like in the FPTP system, with the current number of votes, we also see that independents do not get a seat in any of the sample counts, and here too, this problem gets minimised as independents are no longer competing against lists for votes, but in fact just need to find a place in one of the 15 votes that a voter can cast. More so, as the proportion of list votes in the total votes increases, the individual EQ gets lower for independents. Finally, you may note, NOTA in fact becomes more impactful with a greater vote share, as each NOTA vote sends 15 votes in favour of NOTA.

The Verdict: Various Perspectives

Voter: The STV-PR system ensures parity between every voter, through the principle of one-person one-vote. Given that my vote can only go to one list/independent, I do not need to be too informed as long as I have my mind made up on who I want to see in the House. If I agree with any of the above, or if I am a status quoist, I will probably vote for this system in the referendum. However, if I want to be able to vote across party lines, then I am looking at one of the other two systems. Under FPTP, unless I am a voter who comes to the polls with my mind made up on 15 names I want to send to the House, I am in for a lot of discarded votes. This is bad news for three kinds of voters: the less informed voter, who simply does not keep up with student politics as much; the voter that is not as ‘well-connected’, and would find it difficult to personally know 15 student politicians; and, the ideologues and party loyalists, who adhere to a party’s ideology, but do not know which of the party’s candidates are best disposed to carry it out. Worst of all, if I am a NOTA voter, it is as good as not voting in this system. Swiss PR has a place for both, the voter who knows which 15 candidates they want to vote for, and the voter who does not. As far as I know which party or bloc I support overall, few to none of my votes get discarded. It also empowers the NOTA voter even further. However, for those who believe in the principle of one person one vote, neither of the two reforms are acceptable.

Independents: Under the current system, I would feel like I am at a disadvantage against parties, because every vote to me is a vote that could have gone to a list, where it could fetch more than one seat, potentially even a majority to form government. But if I have to select an alternative, I have to weigh the trade-off in the two systems. In FPTP, on the one hand, I am not competing against lists so a voter is no longer forced to make an exclusive choice, but on the other, I am now up against a much larger pool of competitors, with over 40 individual candidates. And in Swiss PR as well, while I am not competing against lists, I still need enough votes to meet the individual EQ. The system however provides that I am only competing against a field of individual candidates, and not lists as a whole.

New Parties: The current system gives a good headstart to newer parties, because the election outcome depends on the total pool of votes that the parties receives. A move to either of the systems will put newer parties to a greater disadvantage, especially if the party is started by first-year students. They will be up against students who have been on campus for longer, and thereby have had more visibility — an issue gets exacerbated when each voter has 15 votes under the two proposed systems. However, at least Swiss PR in a way encourages new parties to not just depend on the faces of their candidates, but to come up with newer platforms and ideologies, so that under-represented opinions find somewhere to cast their list votes.

Established Parties: This is a system in which we are acquainted and comfortable, and it gives us the structural advantage of forcing the voter to choose between parties, so there is no incentive for us to necessarily promulgate any distinct ideology. We can bank on our more popular candidates to “carry” the less popular ones, and count on our loyalists to vote for us. At the same time, as the custodian of the House seats, we are fully accountable for any and all individual actions of its members, unlike in FPTP, wherein we are reduced to a bloc of independents in this system, without any formal accountability for the actions of individual members. If we want to get more seats, we will seek out the more popular kids to contest for us. We would also have a great disadvantage during campaigning, because each of our candidates are competing, not just with the rest of the candidates, but with each other. Because we probably won’t get to send all our candidates to the debates, this can also incentivise candidates to just run as independents to get the advantage of an assured voice at the debates. Then there is Swiss PR: because there is still list voting, there is accountability for the actions of individual members. However, because there is cross-party voting, unless we ideologically distinguish ourselves from others, we are still a bloc of independents. In other words, unlike STV-PR, parties need to ‘earn’ their list votes, because the system no longer compels the voter to pick one party.

Blocs: The current system is not conducive for any blocs to be formed successfully, because every list is equated to a party, and a list with fewer candidates, say less than 8, will find it difficult to get votes since they do not have a chance of forming a majority. Both the new systems give us more parity with parties, in that someone who votes for us need not discard the remainder of their votes, as they can now vote across party lines. For example, a list of 7 people does not need to displace an entire list of 15 to get votes, only enough of those members to make room for themselves on the ballot.

AUEC: For us, STV-PR is a fairly simple system to implement, but has its own technical challenges. Vote counting is somewhat complex, but that is only a challenge on our end, not the voter. Compared to that, FPTP is the simplest system to execute, in all aspects of managing an election, starting from candidate registration, to designing the ballot, to calculating the outcome. Finally, Swiss PR is the most complex to implement in the backend of things, in terms of the ballot design and the counting of votes.

House: The current system is the most stable system one can hope for. It gives parties control over the seats, so resignations will never lead to any reconfiguration of the seat share. That ensures a continuity across the term, and thereby, improves efficiency. Then there is FPTP, which creates an entirely individualistic House, one where each candidate can claim to be elected entirely on their own. This does not come without its pitfalls. Firstly, this could give us a populist House, with little to no representation from the electoral minority. Secondly, there is no collective accountability, meaning that if I resign, nobody else is answerable for me. This can also lead to instability, and more frequent reconfiguration of seat share. Finally, it makes consensus-building and collaboration — what I personally consider to be one of the primary functions of the House — more challenging. Swiss PR offers an amenable compromise — a balance of stability and individualism. Parties can potentially lose a seat over resignation, and there is the possibility of a reconfiguration of the seat share. That risk, however, will keep parties in check when it comes to control of individuals. More so, looking forward, when the student body grows in size, it’ll be all the more difficult for a voter to know 15 people by name, so the list votes become crucial in letting voters express their preference more accurately.

Appendix: Sample Counting for Last Three Houses

Here is a sample of the different Houses that each system would give us in the last three elections, provided that voter preferences remain constant across each system which is very unlikely. The voting data is from the AUEC, while my exact methodology can be found here, and I gladly invite everyone to identify and inform me about shortcomings or errors in the same. I want to give the reader due disclaimer that using the same election data makes an assumption about constancy of voter preferences under the three systems, and in my defense, I am making that assumption very knowingly, because that also reveals how we might expect voter behavior to change under the proposed systems, and evaluate their merits for ourselves. Below is a summary of my findings, and the legend is as follows:

1. Votes: self explanatory. Under STV-PR, it is taken as the sum of all list votes; under FPTP, it is taken as the sum of all individual votes; and, under Swiss PR, it is taken as the sum of all list votes and individual votes.
2. Vote Share: share of votes received by the group, expressed as a percentage of total votes cast.
3. Proportional seats: Vote Share ✕ 15, rounded down (Indicate how many seats they would have in a perfectly proportional allocation of seats.)
4. Won Seats: number of seats won by all candidate groups except NOTA under that system.
5. Skew: Won Seats-Proportional Seats (Indicates whether the number of seats they have is an under/over-representation of their vote share.)

Note: While NOTA cannot win seats, its allotted seats are calculated under STV-PR and Swiss PR to check whether a NOTA committee (2–5 seats), by-election (5–8 seats), or reelection (8 or more seats) will be required.

Deep Vakil is a Politics and Society major and IR minor, in the Undergraduate Class of 2020. He is the President of the Fifth House of Representatives, and served as the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs in the Fourth House. The AUEC designed the Modified Swiss PR System in consultation with him, specifically the dual-EQ model.