Democracy is free will

Not every day do we get to see all national and regional political parties coming together and agreeing on an issue.

Not every day do we get to see all national and regional political parties coming together and agreeing on an issue.

HT Image

So when they unanimously ask the Election Commission for a ban on opinion and exit polls once elections have been announced, one would reckon that they have got it right. Except that they haven’t. First, the more contentious issue of exit polls. Critics of this variety of survey — in which respondents are asked which party they voted for after they have cast their ballots — find them to be an obstacle to free and fair elections if the polls happen to be conducted as a staggered electoral contest.

At first glance, those opposing exit polls seem to have a point. If, say, on April 20 — the first phase of the coming elections — an exit poll suggests one particular party to be making a sweep in certain areas, it will supposedly generate a ‘bandwagon effect’ among voters who go to the booths on, say, April 26, in other regions. As a result, the exit poll results appear to become a factor in the actual polls slated for a later date and thereby upset the ‘fairness’ or level-playing field of a democratic polling exercise. This sounds fine on paper, except that nothing suggests that this ‘artificially induced cause-effect’ actually takes place. American democracy — perhaps not the perfect example to cite considering the process by which the present American president came to office — has mulled over the issue of exit polls in the past. As recently as 1988, a district court tossed out a Minnesota ban on exit polls which had argued that the projection of winners may discourage citizens in other time zones from voting. The judge rightly stated that “such a purpose is not a sufficient basis for restricting otherwise constitutionally protected speech”. Which holds true also for the Indian context.

It is the ‘freedom of speech’ clause enshrined under Article 19(1) (a) of the Indian Constitution that should be paramount. The fact that opinion polls have regularly gone haywire in their predictions is hardly an argument to shut down the process. Those who believe that opinion and exit polls inject a bias into the electoral system are simply denying people their rightful information. By their logic, a news report predicting a party’s victory or another describing a poorly attended rally should also be disallowed before elections. The fact is that very few people decide on which party or candidate to vote for by peering over and checking what other voters are up to. To underestimate the Indian voter’s free will is to misunderstand democracy itself.