Open Letter to President Elect Donald Trump – Please Fix the American Electoral System

The complexity of the election process in the U.S. and multiplicity of authorities is a perfect breeding ground for confusion. It’s no surprise that a situation like the infamous Florida fiasco of the year 2000 happened when the results were first challenged in the Supreme Court but not pursued to the hilt by the gentlemanly Al Gore who lost to Bush by just a few hundred votes.

Many Americans called Bush the “un-elected president”. Earlier, too, in 1960, Kennedy defeated Nixon by a very narrow margin (49.7 to 49.5 per cent). Many questions were raised about the legality of Kennedy’s win but Nixon chose not to contest the results despite many Republicans, including President Eisenhower, urging him to.

This, however, is perhaps the first time that a candidate─ Donald Trump─ has cast doubts on the legitimacy of the election even before the first vote has been cast. “Just cancel the election and name me the victor”, he suggested. He has also indicated that he may not accept the results if he loses… and at another time Trump said: I will 'totally accept' the results of this election 'if I win'. His supporters have warned of a “revolution” in case Clinton wins.

Compare This to What Works so Well in India

It’s noteworthy that the validity of results declared by the Election Commission of India has never been doubted ─ even candidates losing by just one vote have never questioned the results, though election petitions have been filed on grounds of corrupt practices of the opponent. India had at least three cases of one-vote victory and one even of a tie, decided by the draw of lots. But the legitimacy of the election was never doubted. That’s the reason why the transition of power has always been seamless in India.

What has worked well for India is a fully empowered but fiercely independent and neutral election commission. The biggest reason of the success of Indian system is extreme simplicity. All things considered, Indian elections are regarded as a model for a large part of the world. It is always good to be reminded of Hillary Clinton describing the Indian election system as the “gold standard”.

What Difference does it make?

India and the US are the two largest democracies in the world but the electoral systems of the two countries are poles apart. While the Indian system is charmingly simple, the US system is extremely complex and confusing. India’s election system is marked by its simplicity, and a fully empowered but fiercely independent Election Commission (EC).

What Makes the US Electoral System so Complex?

The US has two federal bodies─ the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) ─ but both of them together do not add up to anything as powerful or effective as the EC in India. In fact, they both [FEC and EAC] have no control over the election administration.

• The FEC consists of six members, three each appointed by the two political parties. A decision requires four votes to make it non-partisan. Its role is confined to federal campaign finance regulations.
• The EAC, also a bipartisan organization, was created only in 2002 to provide funding to states for upgrading their registration and voting systems besides establishing minimum voter identification standards.  Its decisions are, however, not binding.

The basic features of the US system are the following:

• There is no centralized election management body like the Election Commission (EC) in India.
• All 50 US states, and within these states, more than 3,000 counties have different management bodies.
•  The date of the election is fixed─ the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November─ since 1845.
• It’s not just one election but a bunch of simultaneous elections in the US. In many states, a voter will be choosing not just the US president but 20 different contestants on a single ballot, including the member of the US Senate and the House of Representatives, state senate, governor, state attorney general, Supreme Court judge, among others. Furthermore, there are as many as 162 ballot initiatives (referenda) in 35 states.

Some More Facts about the US Electoral Process:

• The onus to register as a voter lies on the voter and it is neither compulsory to register nor to vote.
• The last date for registration varies from one month prior to the poll to the same day (polling day).
•  Online registration is allowed in 31 states plus DC. Any person turning 18 even on polling day is eligible to register.
• The registration of voters is very low. While in India over 95 per cent of all eligible persons are already registered, in the US it was just above 71 per cent in 2012.
• The voter identification system varies too─ from different photo identity proofs to self-authentication without a photo.
• The polling station can be in a variety of buildings including private precincts, shopping malls, churches, community centers, court houses, fire stations besides schools. The polling staff is drawn from a variety of sources─ private, elected and others.
• The voting systems are diverse─ voting at polling stations on poll day, early voting in person, and absentee voting by mail.
• The ballot design varies from state to state.
• Voting technology varies from direct recording electronic voting machines (like Indian EVMs) to paper ballots (marked by pencil or pen). But scanning is invariably used to facilitate counting. Some states have the VVPAT─ Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail.
•  More and more states are starting use the EVMs. However, during the 2016 election cycle, the big EVM controversy has been the integrity, accuracy, and hacking vulnerability of EVMs supplied by the company owned by George Soro ally. Concerns were raised over ties between George Soros, a billionaire and political activist with deep ties to Hillary Clinton, and an electronic voting company with machines in 16 US states. The chairman of the London-based company, Smartmatic International, is Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, who also works under Soros.
• Often questions are asked, should we use EVMs more widely or not─ in view of the issues like errors, no back-up, and their vulnerability to hacking.

How Electoral System impacts the Election Process in America!

• Over 100 Million Eligible Voters Didn’t Vote in the 2016 Presidential Election.
• Over 231 million Americans are eligible to vote, but, based on early results from the 2016 Presidential election, but just over 130 million of them voted for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. The voter turnout for 2016 is expected to be around 56% of eligible voters.
• In some of the key battleground states that decided the 2016 election, less than a few thousand votes decided the result, proving how important every vote really is and how important it is to motivate your party.
• The turnout in the last presidential election [in 2012] was 58.6per cent (compared to India’s 66.8 per cent).
•  With low registration, this effectively means that less than 45 per cent of eligible Americans voted. Voting demographics show that older people─ 65 plus─ tend to vote more than 18-24 year old by as much as 25 percentage points. People with more education and income vote more than the less endowed. Similarly, women vote in larger numbers. Blacks and Hispanics vote less because of lack of interest.

Major Issues with America’s Electoral System

1. Voting is not in the constitution. Of the hundreds of democratic countries in the world, only a handful fails to mention voting rights in their Constitution. Even Iran and Libya at least promise all citizens voting rights. The U.S.Constitution does not. Voting rights have been touched on in 15th, 19th and 26th amendments (race, gender and age) but many core elements of voting rights are left to the states to decide. States of course deserve their own rights, but national elections are worthy of consideration for national rules.
2. Our ballots are hard to use. Every state controls its own ballots. In the 2000 election the butterfly ballot was so poorly designed that many people voted for the wrong person. Some of our current ballots are not much better. Well written guides do exist for designing easy to use ballots, but every state has to choose to follow them (as opposed to Canada, where there is one voting ballot design for national elections).
3. The Electoral College is unnecessary. Few Americans understand how it works or why it exists. It mostly comes up in close elections where the popular vote won’t decide the winner. The electoral college was created in the 1800s as a compromise between two factions, one wanting the popular vote to decide, and the other wanting Congress to decide. The rules for how electoral representatives are chosen and if they can vote for someone other than who their state’s citizens voted for vary state to state.
4. It’s hard for some citizens to vote. People who have the hardest lives, including those working multiple jobs, the disabled, and single parents, struggle to make it to voting booths before they close. Many states allow absentee ballots to help citizens participate, but many do not. While we don’t want to make it too easy to do something this important, some efforts should be made to simplify the process (see lines in Florida and Ohio). Why not move a vague federal holiday like President’s day to be on Election Day, so citizens can honor past president’s by voting for the next one.
5. Confusing standards for qualifying to vote. As a result of no federal rules for who can vote, each state has their own standard for what ID is acceptable or what qualifies. For example some states allow convicted criminals to participate, others do not.
6. Presidential debates are privately organized. Question: Who decides who gets to participate in presidential debates and what the format is? The public? The Senate? U.S. Citizens? The answer is none of these. It’s a group of un-elected officials, chosen largely by the Republican and Democratic parties called the Commission on Presidential Debates. The debates themselves are sponsored by corporations (though what this sponsorship means is unclear). The debates are the only public discourse between candidates and should be protected from partisan and other influences.
7. It’s impossible for most citizens to run for office. Obama and Romney spent $933 million and $841 million respectively in their 2012 campaigns. While never an option for most citizens, the costs of running for office, including senate races, have increased, narrowing the demographics for who can participate. The test of who runs and wins increasingly has more to do with their bank account rather than their merits as a political leader.
8. People are registered to vote in multiple states; people remain on official voting rolls after they have died; people denied access to the ballot box because of a misspelled name or mismatched address. Most election offices collect data through handwritten paper forms mailed in by voters. Inundated officials are unable to keep pace, voters neglect to send notice when they move, and errors abound. Some of the results are staggering. The Pew Research study found that 24 million registrations─ one in eight─ are no longer valid or accurate, more than 1.8 million deceased Americans are listed as active, 2.75 million Americans have active registrations in more than one state and 12 million records contain an inaccurate address.

While I don’t have specific proposals for solving these problems, and do recognize attempting to solve them might create more problems, you have to recognize the problems before you can do anything about them.

What other problems do you see? What solutions do you have?