Poor turnout leads to poor governance. We’re not talking about local government bodies here but the state elections, so we’re not talking about specific wards.

BangaloreGuy & others,

Okay, so there are other ways to engage government to deliver. But you can’t credibly argue that someone who can’t even turn up and vote will bother to go out and lobby public officials. I fully agree that merely voting is not enough, and you need to keep pushing them even after that, but what’s the evidence for the latter? A rational individual/company is more likely to influence/bribe the way out and secure private benefits.

Perhaps you have some evidence to show that a significant number of Bangaloreans are taking up civic responsibilities seriously.

Ok, so let me get this right. To follow from your logic, 4 months you get your salary, and all of a sudden one month you don’t get it, and with no intimation/cause at all. Who’s to blame? You, right? Not your company’s payroll, not your company, but you.

Swell logic!

The information you mention, especially the information about the online checking of voter id, was not widely available (if at all) in the public domain.

As for other identities, there was enough heartburn from the officials at more than one booth over lack of one, and the disability to check for information without one.

The ordering was – very intelligently – not done as per address, or even alphabetical order, by name – but, by the number fixed by Election Commission.

You want the ordinary citizen to take the blame for this too? Mate, if the voter/non-voter were to take blame for such stuff, we might as well not have the EC.

My objection is how repeatedly, people, nay the elite, make it the cornerstone, in fact the only visible part of democracy. When its just 1 day in say 1500 plus days(assuming 5 years).

WHY?

Is our ability to elect representatives or get them to do our bidding restricted to only the voting day? Its like saying the only day you’ve control over your marriage is on the wedding day.

Surely, its not true! We deal with the bureaucracy/government for a lot more day(s) than we spend voting.

I’m not making excuses for people not voting, but I do know that it would’ve been far higher if voting lists were in order.

PS: The ad I was referring to, in Radio one went “Vote Maadi, or Shut up for next 5 years!” I find it highly offensive, and seemingly violating right to freedom of speech.

Actually, the low percentage quoted (44% i guess) by the EC and media might not be giving the correct picture of citizen participation. Please refer one of the articles written by Ramesh Ramanthan (in the TOI, Bangalore) where he says that the actual participation could be somewhere around 70% (because of various reasons like “bogus” voters, “dead” voters etc.). But, in my opinion even 70% would be less.

As far as the points mentioned by BangaloreGuy are concerned, I don’t think they hold much water. It is not fair to just blame the EC. Response to his points:
a) BangaloreGuy himself provides a link where one can check (and could have check long time back) if he/she is there in the voter list. And the voter list was published (even online) long time back. If one was not listed there, one could just fill a form and get added to the list. One could even just telephone a party agent/representative and they would be more than willing to help you with the formalities. Crying wolf on the election day doesn’t help anybody.
b) If one’s name is there in the voter list, any id would have sufficed. It was not mandatory that you have an EPIC. I don’t have an EPIC. I carried my driving license and that was it. Of course, if your name is not there is the voter list, NO id can help.
c) This time also, most big parties distributed the identification slips. In apartments with private securities, parties have found it difficult (if not impossible) to approach each flat owner. So, the identifications slips might have just been placed at the security desk or the post boxes and then got misplaced from there. In any case, one could get these id slips from the desks placed by all major parties near each polling booth.

So, I sincerely think that if one made a little effort, it was not so difficult to get oneself enrolled and vote.

We as a responsible citizens shud do our best in the interest of our state and country. If you dont vote, in your name proxy votes r given and yet again one more ’scum head’ is elected…

And all you lazy non- voters . Thanks to you we will have 5 more yrs of cribbing, bad roads, coalition govt, same old cat and rat fights of the politicians… WELL DONE!!!!

Agree. I voted but I felt I’m just selecting the “lesser of all the evils” available.

Maybe if we had better options available I think there would be more voting in the cities. There was very little interaction with the candidates or campaigning, partly due to EC restrictions I’m told. We looked for web profiles of candidates in our constituencies and couldnt find any, except their own websites. There was some coverage in the papers but again not much detail. It was not like you can check on their voting record, their stand on various issues, past promises vs. delivery to them etc.

But more likely we decided all that is too much work and wouldnt have voted too different, even if we had easy access mechanisms.

regards,
Jai

Overall, there is nothing new in the urban voters’ apathy though.

Nitin,

I was under the impression that voter turnout was even lower in most developed countries. Which one do you have in mind (Ref: Comment 14)?

I can’t win with you one this one. You have real life experience with umm…the ultimate Boss.

In my previous comments, I argued that those were invalid reasons for not turning up to vote. Now let me accept that those were all valid reasons.

That’s why I say, Bangaloreans deserve the Deve Gowdas, Kumaraswamys and Dharam Singhs. It’s not their fault if they win.

As in my response to BangaloreGuy, isn’t this all about making excuses. I think it’s rather presumptuous to say that “oh, we Bangaloreans are too busy with work and all that to suffer the inconvenience of standing in a queue and vote”. We prefer the Indian Idol style SMS voting. There are richer countries, with higher labour productivities, and they don’t mind standing in a queue once in five years to vote.

We are not talking about people who can’t vote because they are not in town. We are not talking about migrants who are not on the voters list. We are talking about those on the list. The voting percentage is based on number of people on the list who voted, so it is a true indicator of participation.