Debating the negative vote

IN Opinion | 30/01/2005

You don`t say!

Darius Nakhoonwala

There is nothing like a mid-week holiday to stop editorial writers dead in their tracks. It makes them lose their sense of bearing. That is perhaps why -- 26 January fell on a Wednesday -- the country`s most influential newspapers wrote rather moodily last week. They covered such a large variety of subjects that one was left wondering if nothing of any major significance had happened. Trivia dominated the edits as heroically as it does the news pages.

But in spite of the determined effort to focus on non-issues, one important issue did come up. This was the idea of allowing voters to register a negative vote after the Supreme Court pronounced on it. The Indian Express and the Hindustan Times (after having languished for decades at the bottom of the `intellect` pile the two have emerged as the most literate papers) got worked up over it .

The Express leader was particularly well written. "A negative vote is not a practical idea for various reasons" it growled and went on to explain why. The burden of its song was that it would not achieve anything if people were allowed to say that none of the candidates listed on the ballot paper had their approval. This is the famous `none-of-these` option that was floated by the Election Commission in December 2001.

It would be more sensible, the Express suggested, to let the voter register a `against` vote instead, rather than a `for` one. "The against votes for a candidate can then be subtracted from their tally of positive votes. This system could ensure that candidates with high negatives are not elected, but it does not impede the responsibility of electing someone in particular, rather than expressing generalised dissatisfaction." So if a candidate gets 100 `For` votes and 99 `Against` ones, his net would be just one vote, his own.

But the Express edit did not take one possibility into account: what if every party nominates a criminal to stand because only a criminal, in its view, has a chance of defeating other criminals. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. It is already happening in Bihar.

The Hindustan Times leader was not as good but the paper at least took the trouble to comment on an important public issue. It could not, however, make up its mind whether it was a good idea or bad to include the `none-of-these-rascals` option on the ballot paper. So the reader was left as befuddled as he was before he read it. That is not what edits are supposed to do. If you can`t decide, don`t write.

There was one other important development last week which also went barely noticed. This was the appointment of a new national security advisor after the last one passed away. While that by itself was perhaps not worth commenting on, the fact that the new man had been told to restructure the National Security Council certainly was. But only the Business Standard and the Indian Express thought so. Both made the point that there had to be a seperation of functions between the Joint Intelligence (JIC) committee, which should handle the immediate problems and the NSC, which ought to focus on long threats to national security.

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