The US seems to lag behind India - how they conduct elections, count votes, and acceptance of the results. India conducted its General Elections to Parliament where 615 million of 912 million eligible voters voted across mostly rural and still remote areas. But, the voting percentage (67.4) was almost identical to the US Presidential Election where 160 million voted out of 239 million eligible voters. And, in India the counting started at 8 AM on 23rd May 2019 and finished by 6 PM the same day. The results were accepted by the losing political parties by the time the counting was not even fully finished in some areas, and winning party received congratulatory messages from the losing parties. And, here in the US, some of the battleground states counted for more than three days and some for more than a week and still no clear winner yet. While in India the process is so uniform across the nation, a lot of states in the US have different electoral processes – who can vote, how they can vote, how absentee ballots can be requested and the deadlines to accept them, and how and when they can be counted.
I surely appreciate the spirit and principles of federalism in the US, but a national election to the President of the United States of America should not and cannot be this arbitrary and haphazard. When a still emerging, significantly uneducated India that speaks more than 20 languages across multiple States up and down the country can conduct elections and declare results in such an unassuming way, why cannot the US, the most advanced and powerful country in the world do better than what it is going through right now, even after two weeks after the election day? I am sure there is an urgent need for a national discussion on how to conduct the General Elections and Midterm Election in the US. The election rules and laws must be made uniform across the country, and there must be a national election commission to conduct these elections. Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) must be utilized for every election, with absentee ballots be returned by 6 PM on the Election Day and must be counted simultaneously to Election Day votes, and results of each State must be declared in a couple of hours, not couple of weeks.
Also, important to be noted, the next US Presidential Election process seems to start the day of the present election results. The long build up to the longer season of the primaries seems to make no sense currently with the advanced communications we have. While State after State primaries was instituted by the founding fathers who were riding horses across our sprawling and unpaved nation things are completely different now. The candidates can now reach the whole nation with debates on TVs, can reach their supporters through Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, and can fly in their private jets across the country in four hours while it took the founding fathers months in 1776 to do the same. A significant portion of the nation seems to be embroiled in politics most of the time due to the same long drawn election process, which in my opinion can be cut significantly by reducing the primaries to two months and General Elections to another month or two. The whole elections process can start on July 4th and end on the Election Day, thereby reducing the political ramblings we all must go through for years.
Hanging chads of Florida (2000 Presidential Election) and more than a month it took, as well as the intervention of the US Supreme Court to decide the winner was not a boasting moment for the US in front of the democratic world. Russian intervention in 2016 elections and candidate Trump egging the web attackers to release the emails of candidate Clinton was seen by the world as weakness of American democracy. Now, the delay in 2020 election results, the refusal of acceptance of the results as well as the allegations of widespread and massive election fraud by President Trump and Republican Party do not bode well for the prestige of the United States of America at all. Similar results were heartily and hurriedly welcomed by the same Republicans and Trump in 2016 (and to Clinton’s credit, she accepted her gut-wrenching results readily to uphold the democracy and decency). The world is watching with disbelief as the US falter and fail in its elections!
And, the US can learn to conduct elections from India!
Gurava Reddy, Atlanta
