How to vote in Presidential election 2010 in Sri Lanka – A simple guide

16 Jan 2010

There is always an element of doubt in the mind of some people in casting vote in elections in Sri Lanka because different elections use subtle variations of use of preferential voting system. However, if you know the simple rules of voting in presidential election together with using commonsense will make your voting a very simple task.

The presidential election law:

- If a candidate gains more than 50% of votes (absolute majority) of first preference votes, they are immediately declared elected.

- Else if none of the candidate get more than 50 % of the total votes, all candidates other than the top two are eliminated and preferential votes of those eliminated candidates will be counted.


- Then , the second preferential votes of the eliminated candidates will be counted and added to the tally of two major candidates. The one getting more than 50 % of the tally will be declared the winner.

- Even at the end of counting second preferential votes of all the eliminated candidates, if none of the top two candidate get the tally of more than 50 %, the same procedure will be repeated counting third preferential votes of the eliminated candidates.

- The winner is declared elected at this stage (by simple majority) even if he one still not got more than half of the valid votes cast.

The simple rules to make your life easy:
One might think this to be complicated process. However applying common sense will see the voting process to be very simple for most of us.

1. If you are voting to one of the top two candidates, your second or third preferential votes will never be counted. Therefore you can safely cast your vote marking either ‘X’ or ‘1’ and forget about rest and you are done. (More than 95 % of the voters in current political context fall into this category)

2. If you think that you are voting for a candidate other than the top two candidates, you might mark ‘1’ for your main supporter and ‘2’ and ‘3’ for the other candidates you prefer in that order. In case none of the candidates get more than 50 % in first count, your second or third preferential vote may valued.

In current context, we do not see a strong third candidate. It looks rest of all the candidates other than the main candidates hardly going to add up at least 1% of the total votes and there for one of the main candidate will easily get more than 50 %.

Therefore, in this year’s presidential election, almost all of you may simply cast your vote using ‘X’ without worrying anything else and you are done. Important thing is not to unduely worry about complexities of voting system but to cast your vote to the true democratic and patriotic candidate having our cultural and social roots and human nature.


Different types of election systems (Just For your additional knowledge only):

First Past the Post (FPTP)
In FPTP systems, the winning candidate is simply the person who wins most votes (a simple majority). In theory, a candidate could be elected with two votes, if every other candidate only secured a single vote.

Two-Round System (TRS)
There is a criticism that First Past the Post (FPTP) elections were incapable of representing minority interests and therefore plurality-majority systems are introduced. The popular type of plurality-majority system used for parliamentary elections is the Two-Round System (TRS), also known as the run-off or double-ballot system.

Each name indicates the central feature of the system: that it is not one election, but takes place in two rounds, often a week or a fortnight apart. The first round is conducted in the same way as a normal First Past the Post (FPTP) election. If a candidate receives an absolute majority of the vote, then they are elected outright, with no need for a second ballot. If, however, no candidate receives an absolute majority, then a second round of voting is conducted, and the winner of this round is declared elected.

Preferential voting (What we adapt for presidential election of Sri Lanka)
One way of getting around the disadvantages of the Two-Round System (TRS) is to merge the first and second round into one election.

There, voters are asked to mark not only their first choice candidate (using ‘X’ or ‘1’), but also (if they wish) their second or third choices by placing the numbers '1', '2' and '3' next to the names of the candidates. If a candidate gains an absolute majority of first preference votes, they are immediately declared elected. However, if no candidate gains an absolute majority, all candidates other than the top two are eliminated, and their second or third choice votes are passed on to one or the other of the two leading candidates, according to the preference ordering marked. Whoever achieves the highest number of votes at the end of this process is declared elected. This system thus achieves in one election what TRS achieves in two, with significant cost savings and greater administrative efficiency.

Reference:
- http://aceproject.org


Related Posts:
- Elections - the Tests of the nation