Commentary/Ashok Mitra

Of elections, haut couture, crime and venality

The US presidential election, held every five years on the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November, are over. The outcome of this year's presidential poll was so predictable as to be denuded of all suspense. The losing candidate has complained bitterly about the harmful influence of the pre-poll opinion, surveys, which he considers as a major contributory factor for his defeat. He has a point.

Statistical techniques and inferences drawn therefrom have attained such a degree of sophistication that actual happenings on election day have as good as lost their relevance.

Tallies based on opinion polls can already indicate the final returns. State by state, congressional district by congressional district, even precinct by precinct. These exude an aura of certitude which is the bequest of state-of-the-art information technology. Forecasts have become the ultimate message. Even with barely one per cent of the votes cast, straw exit polls can now predict, to an eerie degree of precision, how the aggregate votes are going to divide.

Excitement may still attach to individual contests, such as for a closely fought senate seat or a gubernatorial slot. But the big event, choosing the president, for the spell of the next four years, of the world's most powerful nation, has been reduced to a tepid formality. Give or take a decade or two, a situation may well arise when the necessity on the part of voters to take the trouble of trudging to the polling booths to exercise their franchise would be the subject of serious debate.

Opinion polls, it could be argued, should be invested with the formal authority to pronounce the verdict, with everybody staying home to watch and listen to post-election panegyrics on television.

Information technology, in other words, would decide the mandate as well as the choice of the person to be charged with the responsibility of implementing the mandate. Come to think of it, a denouement of this nature is no longer a grotesque proposition. It merely extends a trend that is already established. With counting completed for barely 10 per cent of the ballots cast in the US presidential poll, the candidate trailing to vote concedes, gracefully or otherwise, victory to his opponent and goes to bed. It should therefore not be at all mind-boggling if, at a certain juncture, the voters are even spared the bother of casting the ballot.

Forecasting techniques would reach a foolproof state, and no scope would exist for even a millimetre of discrepancy between the prediction and the real outcome. Glorious uncertainties may still continue to dominate cricket, but elections, democratic elections, would have no parallel to draw with the otherwise charming game. Democratic choice is serious business, so serious that the actual exercise of suffrage by the voters would be dispensed with; forecasts would be all.

Some conservative elements insist on being around in all societies till the bitter end. They will conceivably raise a moral issue in the event the proposal to dispense with formal balloting is sought to be pushed through. Are pre-poll opinion polls and surveys, howsoever scientifically organised, basically in the nature of campaign propaganda! The electorate consists of human species. Human species are rational animals, but they have their occasional failings. They are, for instance, vulnerable to the allure of the herd instinct.

The possibility of a behavioural contradiction cannot therefore be ruled out. Despite their predilection for free will, men and women do not generally relish the idea of going it alone. It is out of their free will that voters allow themselves to be interviewed in the course of the pre-election polls and express their opinions.