EDIT from April 19, 2024: The legislative elections begin in India this Friday. In power for ten years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the favorite.
That’s it, it’s official, the legislative elections in India will begin on April 19 with nearly a billion voters called to the polls. Here’s what you need to know about voting in the world’s largest democracy.
How do Indians vote?
All Indians aged 18 and above are eligible to vote, representing 970 million voters, according to the Election Commission. Turnout in the last national elections exceeded 67%, with nearly 615 million votes cast. India uses electronic machine voting which saves time, particularly for counting.
According to the electoral commission, the system is secure with no possibility of being controlled remotely or altering the results. Audit machines at election offices allow voters to verify that their vote was recorded.
Officials will have to transport the ballots by all means, sometimes even on camel, mule and or yak, depending on the region, to ensure each voter can exercise their right. They could sometimes be accompanied by security forces in regions with a past insurrection.
What logistics?
Every national election in India constitutes the largest democratic exercise in human history. In total, 15 million electoral agents will be mobilized for this election, including some from multiple sectors of the public service, temporarily assigned to polling stations.
According to organizers, operating the 1.05 million polling stations in a single day is an impossible task. Electoral laws require that each voter live no more than two kilometers from a voting booth.
During the last elections, in 2019, a voting booth was installed for a voter who lived in the heart of a forest in the state of Gujarat, in the west of the country. To alleviate the immense logistical burden, the vote is spread over six weeks. Local weather, religious festivals, agricultural harvests and school schedules are also taken into account to ensure that all of India can take part in the vote.
What cost?
According to a report from the Center for Media Studies (CMS), $8.7 billion was spent on the 2019 election. About a quarter of that amount was cash payments made directly to voters by candidates to attempt to influence their decision, according to the report.
In February, the think tank predicted that this year’s election spending would exceed $14.2 billion, an amount nearly equal to that of the 2020 U.S. election.
What prospects?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 73, is seeking a third term after his landslide victories in the 2014 and 2019 elections. According to a Pew survey published last year, he enjoyed a favorable opinion from 80% of Indians after nearly a decade in power.
The opposition has been handicapped by internal struggles but also, according to rights defenders, by politically motivated judicial investigations aimed at hindering any opponent of the Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata (BJP), of Narendra Modi. While there is little doubt about the BJP’s victory, there is speculation about its scale. Party leaders publicly assure that they will win a two-thirds majority in the lower house.
Such a result would allow the party to modify India’s secular constitution as it wishes and to pursue old ideological projects such as the controversial Civil Code aimed at standardizing a multitude of laws including those on marriage and divorce which differ, according to religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Sikhs.
When will the results be?
Publishing exit poll data is illegal under Indian law. Counting will begin once each of the country’s 28 states and eight territories have finished voting on June 1. The results are expected to be announced the same day. The party with a simple majority of 273 seats or more in the lower house will be invited to form a government with its choice of prime minister.
If no party achieves this goal, the Indian president should ask the majority party to form a coalition with smaller regional parties. In the past, this has given rise to intense negotiations, lasting days and sometimes weeks, to achieve a majority.