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Comment by pradn | Hacker News Reader

The mechanics of the actual election seem to be decent enough. But there is rampant vote buying in many areas. I've personally seen liquor handed out for votes. Money, clothing, and alcohol are commonly used to purchase votes in many rural areas. Last I heard, it cost something like like 1000-3000 RS ($15-40) per head in rural Andhra Pradesh.

FT article from 2014: https://www.ft.com/content/a9d35821-f2f1-3479-8082-2ce1e6fa7...

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How do the people buying votes make sure that the voter is voting the way they want? Do they not have a secret ballot?

I've seen religious tactics applied effectively for this,

The potential voter is asked to swear over a religious artifact after receiving the money (bribe).

e.g. For Hindu voters, a plate with oil lamp, an idol, a mixture of auspicious powder is used.The voter should swear over it that they will vote for that particular candidate.

Elections are the main reason, politicians ensure religious superstitions flourish in India inspite of evil practices like casteism, sharia etc. Even when India's constitution is godless & secular (amended).

Thanks to really noble people behind India's constitution.

As an Indian who has worked extensively in multiple elections have "been there done that", let me tell everyone that above comment is completely ridiculous and devoid of any truth. It is not even a fringe phenomenon.

Let me answer the original question.

No one buys a vote in return of goodies. They buy "loyalty" vote is a consequence of that.

Each candidate appoints a booth level worker first. The booth level worker is in the inner circle of trust for the candidate and booth size is typically <1400 voters. Entire history of voting patterns of each booth is available publicly. A worker may handle multiple booths too.

The booth worker being a local already knows which way the winds are blowing and how to change their directions. For the poorest of poor he might offer cash and alcohol. For others he might offers government jobs, fake degrees, sex, licenses for businesses, shut eye approach towards illegal construction, protection from abusive husband and so on.

Once the voter buys in, he has to show absolute loyalty towards this candidate. He is expected to appear in rallies, at local speeches and even argue in favor of the candidate in market. Each person has enemies and in case Mr X appears to be saying unfavorable things in public someone will inform the booth level worker who will then show up at his house with goons.

You also need to understand secondary consequences of this sort of signaling. It means if a person was seen so actively working for Candidate X and if candidate Y wins, Candidate Y will not even help this person in future because obviously he was seen with Candidate X so often. (This can literally ruin people's lives from what I have seen). This also means there is zilch advantage for the person to backstab candidate X at the voting booth. (If you are married to her , you might as well have sex with her sort of thing). It is this phenomenon that eliminates back stabbing voters.

In my personal experience this soon reaches the level of lassie fair economics. At some point it pays lot more to simply sabotage the booth agent of your opponent instead of actually buying voters. If your prospective booth agent betrays you, you lose hundreds of votes. Just like voters even the booth agents are greedy. The candidate gives him lot of cash to distribute but sometimes he just keeps it to himself.

Part of the reason why BJP has done well in recent times despite spending less money than Congress is because BJP relies on its sister organization RSS which is a cadre based organization. They have pre-vetted individuals at every booth level whose loyalty is beyond doubt. The Congress party on other hand mostly relies on mercenary concept. They do a primary round of bidding where people who want their tickets tell how much money they can spend. The highest spender will then be given the ticket to fight elections. He has to donate 10% upfront to the party chief.

Note:

In my personal experience, with the exception of certain regions in most regions elections are pretty fair and are not determined by money. At least when it comes to Federal (central) elections. All candidates are aware of this fact. You might be able to gain additional 3% votes by sheer cash but you need to employ various other tactics to get more votes. As the middle class in India becomes larger and more aspirational the bids for votes change too. Even the poorest of poor now has electricity and hence correctly values 24x7 electricity above Rs 500 once in 5 years.

> At some point it pays lot more to simply sabotage the booth agent of your opponent instead of actually buying voters.

Could you please elaborate how after the booth agent is sabotaged, he changes the voters mindset or vote? I believe it is very difficult to actively do it i.e. tell the voters to vote for the opposite candidate. At the maximum it will be very passive i.e. he keeps the money to himself and simply not go to voters to work for his candidate.

Booth agents are sabotaged very early in the campaigning process. The most common scenario is where the booth agent will secretly contact the opposition candidate and continue to pretend to be loyal to his own master while deliberately feeding incorrect information. In many cases he will simply not spend the cash that was given to him to distribute among voters. In some cases he will deliberately ignore visiting the swing votes.

Isn't this very risky? There is a high chance that he will get caught. A smart politician would do recce to see if the money is distributed. What would happen if he is caught?

This is really close to the Roman concept of plebs and patricians, or patreons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome

That is an excellent observation. People and societies are more or less very similar all across the world. The details might vary but the main motivations are more or less same.

This is true. Especially in the slum area's this is very common. The voters are supposed to switch off the burning camper with their hand as a religious promise ritual.

This is a complete fabrication. Never have I heard of this happening, let alone it being a major phenomenon anywhere.

I have heard from family members who were approached by party workers asking to swear on god to get money. But they refused. It doesn’t happen in rich and posh areas they target less developed uneducated neighborhoods.

There is no doubt in some remote corner of India some party worker might ask people to swear on their kids, gods and what not. But let me confirm that it is not even a phenomenon. Mostly figure of speech. OP used graphic details as if it is some cult practice "For Hindu voters, a plate with oil lamp, an idol, a mixture of auspicious powder is used."

Either the party worker has to be naive to believe that such ritual has any value or the people have to be completely stupid. Poor people are desperate and will happily take whatever money that comes their way and will not care too hoots about swearing on Gods. Remember if you can do a ritual to swear on God another one can invent a ritual to free you from that oath.

He is right about the oil lamp and the idol thought. When I said swear on god it’s on the idol.

But he is completely wrong to claim that is common or even a working solution.

I presume, most readers if HN would know Bangalore.

'Karnataka election 2018: Rider for freebies - swear in the name of god that you'd vote for me'[1]

[1]:https://m.timesofindia.com/city/bengaluru/karnataka-election...

I don't understand why this is being down voted. The op is backing his argument with a link to national news paper and he is getting down voted. This post getting down voted is the proof of educated people still having caste feelings within them. Thanks to the Indian Constitution, without it most of population in India would never had education.

I am not sure what your agenda is, but your response is disingenuous. You have taken a specific and rare incident which was reported for its "shock value" (it is quite easy in India to publish a story with an agenda) and have presented it in a manner which implies it is some sort of a norm.

While there certainly is corruption, given the size and scale of elections in India, it is laudable that things are conducted in a proper manner for the large part.

The people who are given incentives are very poor and uninformed about the ways of politics. Ideally, they can either refuse the incentives or just get it and vote the way they want.

By human nature, they get a sense of obligation when they receive the incentives. They feel committed to vote for the party that provided the incentive. Even trying to convince them they don't have to, does not work. They feel the onus is on them to complete the "transaction" by casting the vote.

That said, this is more of issue in by-elections, where there is only one or a handful of constituencies and the politicians can focus on them.

When the election is state-wide or nation-wide, the major determining factor is still the popular sentiment towards the political parties in question (based on their track record in power, which of course is skewed by media).

Elections are a recurring event. I cannot prove it but it's behavioral training. People seem to vote for whoever gives them the best "incentive". I hesitate to call it a bribe because in other countries they call it "tax relief", "student loan forgiveness" etc.,

There are many academic studies on this exact topic. Two theories are given weight: 1) people feel a sense of obligation because they received something (the natural human tendency to repay debts) 2) being able to buy votes is a forward-looking signal that shows the party/candidate is serious and may be able to provide further benefits down the line.

Further, political operators can at least guarantee that they went to the polls. This way, they can influence turnout.

See https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/world-politics/artic...

I imagine it's more practical to try to 'get out the vote' without all the marketing in the middle, than try to bribe a person to vote against their interest.

It's a secret ballot but many people have phones.

The tradition in (parts of) Italy is similar:

http://in-formality.com/wiki/index.php?title=Voto_di_scambio...

This is why it is illegal to take pictures of your vote.

Capture your ballot with vote on the phone, then show it to dealer to receive bribe.

Banned a long time back. No cellphones are allowed.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/ec-bans-use-of-cell-pho...

They can't. It's a secret ballot.

Cell phone with camera?

My maid's family was bribed this way. They took the food and voted the way they wanted to anyway.

No one knows who you are once you're inside the voting booth :)

> No one knows who you are once you're inside the voting booth :)

Then how do you know who they voted for?! :)

A Bollywood movie, Newton (available for free to view on Amazon Prime Video), depicts plight of one such fictional instance of vote manipulation in India: https://www.amazon.com/Newton-Rajkummar-Rao/dp/B077MHZYDL

tldr A honest govt officer running a polling booth in an area under Naxal (communist separatists) influence grapples with corruption, deciet, hopelessness, manipulation, and hypocrisy.

Definitely the best movie I watched in 2018. I think it did a much better job of depicting life in India than any other movie I've ever seen. I recommended it to a couple of European friends who watched it with subs and they enjoyed it too.

Re: Life in India: Found this South Indian movie, Joker, to be quite excellent. https://www.amazon.com/Joker-Guru-Somasundaram/dp/B06XB79BVD

tldr https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_(2016_film)#Plot

For compare, articles say $2.4BN USD spent in 2016 Presidential Election, with 137.5MM voting. That's $17.45 per capita. But I don't know if I'd swing a vote for a single bottle of wine!

Indian voters don't swing their vote for the money. They know it's a secret ballot, pocket the money, and tell the buyer they voted for them.

BTW I wrote this about US election

What are the chances election campaigns become a thing of the past?

I know zero about politics but... why don't citizens get presented a list of what each candidate supports, where there is overlap between candidates, and where there is disagreement?

Why do candidates need to "spread the message" and "go on tour" and "win people over" when we as citizens are supposed to, at the root, be voting on what policies they believe in (which seems concrete + fact, instead of something like leaving a wooing/lasting impression with a speech/appearance)

> I know zero about politics but... why don't citizens get presented a list of what each candidate supports, where there is overlap between candidates, and where there is disagreement?

Who compiles that list, and on what information is it based?

> when we as citizens are supposed to, at the root, be voting on what policies they believe in

Well, for one thing, that's not what a lot of people (including the founders) think/thought voters are supposed to be voting on; representative democracy is not just a hack around the logistical impracticality of direct voting on all issues, but a means of selecting people with the skill and character to find good answers to questions that the electorate may not anticipate and most members would lack either the time or the skill to find a good answer even if they did have a direct vote.

> Who compiles that list, and on what information is it based?

A neutral third party (kind of like the federal reserve isn't supposed to be affiliated with any political party... or is this wildly inaccurate)

I'm pretty sure modern day politics are composed of 10-20 hard problems.

1. Providing quality of life for the poor/sick/elderly 1. Protecting citizens via military/war 1. Stances on drugs/drug related crimes 1. Economy wellness (stimulation/QE) 1. Education 1. Transportation 1. Energy/environment/climate change 1. Rights (gender, sexual preference, etc.)

> Well, for one thing, that's not what a lot of people (including the founders) think/thought voters are supposed to be voting on

Is that what you vote for? A politician is a figurehead in my eyes, and it is their job to carry out what they said they were going to (aka not change their policy after winning votes).

> Why do candidates need to "spread the message" and "go on tour" and "win people over" when we as citizens are supposed to, at the root, be voting on what policies they believe in (which seems concrete + fact, instead of something like leaving a wooing/lasting impression with a speech/appearance)

That assumes that citizens are supposed to be voting on policies. In our representative democracy, we vote on the people we want, not policies. The specific policies will be unrecognizable after they get through the process of political compromise. What people are really voting for is the person whose hand they want on the wheel.

The person that writes your list of descriptions of the candidates is now in control of who gets elected.

Also, people vote for politicians based on how the politician makes the voter feel about themselves. Many many many people vote against their economic self interest with full understanding that they are doing so. There is a lot more to who someone votes for than their list of policy proposals.

> Many many many people vote against their economic self interest with full understanding that they are doing so.

Can you give me an example? Do you mean top earners voting for democrat because democrats are typically seen as more empathetic in society?

Well, there are questions like:

-will the candidate follow the policies they claim to support?

-How will the candidate vote on issues not explicitly mentioned in pre-election material?

-How well can the candidate advocate for their positions?

-Does the candidate have enough political clout to make a difference?

So you have to consider things like character, experience and party membership in addition to the talking points.

> -will the candidate follow the policies they claim to support?

Candidates today who don't do this only run the risk of not being re-elected as their punishment, correct? Candidates aren't really held liable to their claims. What percentage of candidates end up having to flip stances on their claims due to external circumstances? What percentage of those claim stances get flipped?

> -How will the candidate vote on issues not explicitly mentioned in pre-election material?

Could we argue that 95% of issues could fall into 10-20 pillars and could be fleshed out up front? If not 95%, what percentage? It's impossible to forecast economic/environmental circumstances obviously (along with other countries having free will to do whatever they want, in context of military actions/reactions)

> How well can the candidate advocate for their positions?

Does this mean "how beefy is their resume/how qualified is the candidate"?

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