Ancient votes to modern elections
In 2024, at least 40 national elections will be held around the world, engaging two billion voters. Recently, India concluded its democratic festival, and the new government has been sworn in.
This moment takes me back to my childhood, recalling not only India’s first general election in 1952 but also earlier elections for Trichy Municipality. In those days, there were no symbols; instead, voters used different coloured boxes with one or more stripes of another colour. In school, we learned about the Kudavolai system from the Chola era (9th–13th century), where candidates’ names were written on palm leaves and placed in a pot. A child would draw names to select the members. This ancient democratic practice is inscribed in the Uttaramerur temple from the eighth century, detailing the constitution of the local council, candidate eligibility, and the selection method.
In ancient Greece, around 508 BC, a system of negative voting was used. Male landowners voted annually to exile the political leader they most wanted to banish for ten years. Voters used broken pieces of pottery, called ostraka, leading to the term “ostracise.” If a candidate received more than 6,000 votes, the one with the most votes was exiled. If no one received 6,000 votes, all remained. Given the limited voter base, it was possible for no one to be exiled in a fairly even vote distribution. Today, how many politicians could withstand 6,000 negative votes?
In 139 BC, the Romans introduced secret voting. In the United States, voting rights evolved from being restricted to ‘white men aged 21 or more’ in 1776 to including black men in 1870 and women in 1920, and now to all citizens aged 18 and above. The first voting machine, featuring a pulley, was introduced in New York in 1892, and mechanical voting machines became widespread by World War II. In India, electronic voting machines (EVMs) were first used in Kerala’s Parur Assembly polls in 1982. They saw limited use in 1999 in a few constituencies, and since 2004, EVMs have been used nationwide.
To provide immediate feedback to voters, the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) was first used in the Noksen assembly constituency of Nagaland in September 2013. Since 2019, it has been implemented in all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies, with a 2 per cent audit check. However, EVMs have been contentious, with some advocating for a return
to paper ballots. It will be interesting to see how elections evolve in the technological era.