Here are some reports of electoral malpractices from different parts of the world. Is there anything that these countries can learn from India to improve their elections? What would you suggest in each case?
(a) During an election in Nigeria, the officer in charge of counting votes deliberately increased the votes of one candidate and declared him elected. The court later found out that more than five lakh votes cast for one candidate were counted in favor of another.
(b) Just before elections in Fiji, a pamphlet was distributed warning voters that a vote for former Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhary will lead to bloodshed. This was a threat to voters of Indian origin.
(c) In the US, each state has its own method of voting, its own procedure of counting and its own authority for conducting elections. Authorities in the state of Florida took many controversial decisions that favored Mr. Bush in the presidential elections in 2000. But no one could change those decisions.
(a) The issue of deliberate miscounting of the votes is generally possible when the process is liable to be manually manipulated. India uses Electronic Voting Machines which are deemed impossible to manipulate. Nigeria can pick this from India.
(b) Pressurizing or threatening of the voters can never be tolerated in an election. In India, we have an active and powerful election commission that can order investigation in such cases and make sure that those involved in this are suitably handled by law. Fiji can learn this from the Indian system.
(c) In India, there is a special body which conducts and look after all the decisions and things of election that is the Election Commission of India but in US there is no unified agency due to which election process if U.S is different and decisions are taken arbitrarily.