Can Electronic Voting Machines solve Caste based voting In India ?

                   

It was around 8:00 PM on 16th May when Arnav Goswami from Times Now ecstatically stated that Modi wave had made people in Uttar Pradesh look beyond their caste and instead vote for Development. He along with all the panellists sounded in unison in declaring an end to caste based politics in India. But before drawing such a big conclusion what these poll pundits were ignoring were the 5 seats of Bijnor, Kannauj, Etawah, Manipuri and Badayun which went to Samajwadi Party (SP). A predominantly Yadav belt inspite of several failures of the State Government led by Akhilesh Yadav  continued to  vote for their dear Yadav leaders.

The fact is caste based politics is something which is pretty much ingrained in the mind set of Indians. We simply have to accept that people vote for their castes and as long as this is true political parties will continue fielding candidates of particular castes as it ensures a certain degree of win-ability for them. So how do we tackle this mess and ensure that ultimately the best people win and represent us in the parliament?

The answer is weighted voting. Let’s say in some ABC constituency there are 10 candidates who are contesting the election. Candidate A is a Brahmin, B is a Yadav and C belong Scheduled Caste and 7 other candidates belong to OBC. Under this system each voter would be allowed to caste 5 votes. However each vote will have a unique weight assigned to it. For instance the first vote will carry a weight equivalent to 5 points, 2nd vote will have 4 points and likewise 5th vote will carry a weight of 1 points. So under this system total votes for a particular candidate will be equal to

Total votes for a Candidate = No of Votes on 1st instance *5+No of Votes on 2nd instance *4+Nof of votes on 3rd instance *3+No of Votes on 4th instance *2+No of Votes on 5th instance *1

So how does this ensure that good candidates gets selected ? Well, if I am Brahmin voter and I vote for my caste then it is likely that the 1st vote I caste would be for candidate A who is a Brahmin. However there is every likelihood that my subsequent four votes would be based more on merit and profile of candidates and less on the basis of their caste.

Though this system is not fool proof but it can certainly act as a big deterrent against the menace of caste based politics especially in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.