Three weeks down, and Two to go!   

VOTING IN INDIA for the National Elections

Offering all 815,000,000 eligible voters the chance to vote in India is no easy task.  Hence, voting takes place over a 5 week period - April 7 until May 12, with counting taking place on May 16th.  

India is the world's largest democracy.  The size of it's voting population is larger than the voting population of the next 5 largest democracies  - COMBINED!  The US had only 235 million eligible voters in 2012 - less than 1/3 the Indian electorate.  

Voters with ID cards

The logistics of accommodating all of these voters are difficult:

• Multilingual electorate - over 22 officially-recognized languages
• 2/3  of the country's 1.2 billion citizens live in areas with limited or no electricity
• 287 million illiterate adults

To handle this, over 11 million election officials and security forces will staff close to one million polling stations, using 1.7 million EVMs (electronic voting machines).  

These EVMs are brief-case sized, run on 6v batteries,  use symbol-oriented buttons, and are made right here in India at a price tag of $175/unit.  (see EVM being carried in pic to polling station.)

Carrying EVM to polling station in state of ASSAM

Poster to promote VOTING

Mumbai and some of the neighboring regions voted this past Thursday, April 24th.  Polls open 7am - 6pm.  

When you have voted, your finger is marked with an indelible ink pen - so that you don't vote again.

There are 3 major candidates for Prime Minister (PM term is 5 years).  Technically, Indians don't vote for the Prime Minister.  They vote for the Lok Sabha (House of the People - similar to our House of Representatives or Britain's Parliament) politicians.  The leader of the majority party becomes Prime Minister.  So, the good news, is that the Prime Minister has a majority in the "parliament".   If the majority party does not win 272 of the 543 seats, then a coalition government will be formed. 

The 3 major candidates are (not in popular order!): 

1. Rahul Gandhi for the Congress Party (the party of the current PM - Manmohan Singh) and descendant of a long line of former PMs - father Rajiv Gandhi (1984-89),  grandmother Indira (1966-77, 1980-84),  and great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru (1st PM,  1947 - 64)
2. Narendra Modi for the BJP Party - Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party) The only non-Congress Party PM was from BJP: Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-2004)
3. Arvind Kejriwal for the AAP - (Aam Aadmi Party - Common Man Party)

Another option for PM Candidate:  NOTA (None of the Above)  This is the first time that Indians can vote for none of the available candidates by casting a vote for NOTA.  

I'll let you know who wins - but right now the papers are generally predicting Modi.

Back in 1920, the US had the world's largest electorate.  I found this article from the NYT when I was doing my biggest electorate google:

5 Nov 1920

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50B1EFB355411738DDDAC0894D9415B808EF1D3