New York, Oct 25 (IANS) The US takes on the mantle of global arbiter of democratic legitimacy, but its own chaotic electoral system won’t pass muster in many countries, including India, due to its shortcomings ranging from disparate procedures to using different voting machines.
The root of the problem is that even though there is some basic national legislation, most election rules and procedures are set by states, and sometimes by local entities, because there is no equivalent of the Election Commission of India.
There isn’t even a national Model Code of Conduct for elections.
The problems start with the US Federal Election Commission, which is tasked with enforcing federal campaign finance laws, but not with conducting the elections, which is left to the states.
Therefore, election procedures, even the most mundane like voter identification, and penalties for violating election laws and regulations vary by states.
Unlike in India where there is a 48-hour quiet period before election day, in the US the din of campaigning can continue right through the election day.
Take voter identification, which in most countries would be considered fundamental to ensuring election integrity.
In 14 states, including large ones like California and New York, voters are not required to produce identification to vote, and in some others, just an electricity, phone, or water bill will suffice.
California has gone a step further passing a law that would make asking for voter identification illegal, although that law would come into force only after the current elections.
Democrats oppose requiring identification to vote claiming it discriminates against minorities and the poor who would face difficulties in getting IDs because among other things, they lack transportation to go to offices for them, although the poor have to have identification to get subsidised or free food.
Some states with strict voter ID rules, however, give out free voter IDs – like India does.
States follow different timetables for the elections, although the official election day across the country is the first Tuesday in November – this year, the 5th.
Pennsylvania began early in-person voting on September 16, allowing voters to vote at the local boards of elections, but in other states like New York, it begins on Saturday.
As of Thursday evening, nearly 31 million voters – about 16 per cent of the total electorate of 186.5 million – had voted either in person or through absentee ballots, which can be posted or dropped off at local election offices.
States also have different rules on who can get postal ballots and how they are collected.
Because of the danger of “vote harvesting” – party activists or sympathisers collecting postal ballots from voters and marking them up before depositing them – some states have imposed limitations — like Florida limiting the number of ballots a person can collect to two, while others have no restrictions.
Who can vote is itself a matter of controversy.
Criminals serving their sentences can vote from their prisons in Maine and Vermont, but in some others, they can only vote after they complete their sentences, while in some like Florida, those convicted of murder and serious sexual crimes are barred even after they complete their sentences.
There is a move to give voting rights to non-citizens and although it hasn’t yet made headway at federal and state levels, Washington and some places in Maryland and Vermont allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.
New York City passed a law giving non-citizens voting rights, but a judge declared it unconstitutional. The US follows the electoral college system under which the President is elected not directly by voters, but indirectly through the electoral college made up of 538 people for whom the citizens vote.
(The members of the electoral college are committed to candidates and on the ballots it is the name of the candidate that will appear.)
How the electoral college votes are distributed depends on the states: Nebraska and Maine split them up in proportion to the votes polled by the candidates, but the others transfer all the votes to the party getting the majority.
The US doesn’t have a common voting machine, and even within a state, the machines could vary by jurisdiction.
In New York state, the city and some counties use machines from a company called Election Systems & Software, while others deploy machines from Dominion Voting Systems, a company founded in Canada and has headquarters in Toronto and Denver.
The systems in most states use paper ballots that are inserted by voters into the voting machines, which read and count them.
In a controversy involving the system, a judge in Georgia blocked an order by the state election board to require the number of paper ballots to be counted manually before the results are certified.
There are differences in how recounts are conducted. In at least some places in Pennsylvania, the representatives of the candidates have to stand behind a barrier, away from the table where the counting is done.
The biggest surprise is in how election results are announced. Without an effective national election commission, it is the Associated Press news agency that first announces the election results by having its staff and temporary workers – said to total about 5,000 on election day – collect vote counting data and call the winner.
The official announcements are delayed to varying degrees, again because of the rules for certifying the results can go down to the local levels and then to the state levels.
Another factor is the different procedures followed for counting postal, absentee, and early ballots that can hold up the announcements of results even by the AP or other media in tight contests where a few hundred or thousand votes can make a difference.
In 2020, the election was held on November 3, but it took four more days for the AP and other media to declare Joe Biden the winner when the results from Pennsylvania could finally be tallied taking him over the 270 electoral college vote-mark, even as results from some other states were pending.
Differences between systems come into play in the internal elections held by parties to nominate their presidential candidates.
Some follow the primary system of registered party members casting secret ballots.
Others adopt the caucus system where party members gather in person at a place and time and line up according to their preferences to get counted.
That does away with secrecy in voting and forces attendance at a given time, rather than letting party members vote at their convenience.
The one area where the Federal Election Commission is effective is in imposing uniform rules for campaign contributions for national elections.
Contributions made in cash by individuals are limited to $100 and anonymous contributions cannot exceed $50.
Otherwise, an individual can only donate directly to a candidate $3,300, and there are also limits on contributions to political action and other committees, and by those bodies to candidates.
Sometimes these are undercut by the use of “straw donors” – a person giving money to others to donate to a candidate as if it is their own contribution.
The so-called Super PACs (Political Action Committees) leap through the biggest loophole in the system to help the election of their preferred candidates.
There are no limits on how much a person or an organisation or a company can contribute to Super PACs.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has given $120 million to a Super PAC to support Republican candidate Donald Trump, while Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is reported to have sent $50 million to Super PACs backing Democrat candidate Kamala Harris.
While the Super PACs are forbidden from giving money directly to a candidate or a party or from coordinating directly with them, they can spend any amount on campaigns to help a candidate.
For example, they can run a TV ad campaign to promote a candidate if they do it on their own.
There is also the phenomenon of “walking money” — funds provided with scant accounting to party members on election day to mobilise voters and can be freely spent on anything.
–IANS
al/rad