Illiterate voters

Making their mark

Teaching those who cannot read how to vote makes for cleaner, fairer elections

The Economist | Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition

SUVARNA PADEKAR cannot read. “It hurts,” she says, but she manages to get by as a cook in Mumbai. Each morning her employers let her know what food to prepare by leaving pictures of vegetables, rice and so on stuck to the fridge. Soon Mrs Padekar will pick her favourite from similar images—at the voting booth. Almost 815m people will be eligible to vote in India’s general elections, which start on April 7th (see article). About a quarter are illiterate and will identify their choices by party symbols such as a hand, lotus, or elephant.

lliterates are a big share of the electorate in several other countries going to the polls this year, including Afghanistan (on April 5th), Brazil, Iraq, Malawi and Mozambique. Compared with their compatriots who can read, they will be less likely to cast a vote at all, and more likely to spoil their vote if they do. Illiteracy rates are higher among marginalised ethnic minorities and the poor: 5-35% for Roma (gypsies) in European countries, for example. Far more women than men are illiterate in Africa, much of Asia and the Middle East.

Illiterates are also more likely to be persuaded to sell their votes, or tricked or intimidated into voting for crooks and thugs. Mrs Padekar admits to voting for a generous candidate in the most recent local elections: she and her friends got a taxi ride to the polling station, cash, saris, prayer utensils and a free trip to a famous temple. (“Ask god to elect me,” he told them.) Politicians in eastern and central Europe sometimes pay loan sharks to buy the votes of Roma who owe them money, says Zeljko Jovanovic of Open Society Foundations, a group that campaigns for Roma inclusion. A 2011 paper by Toke Aidt, Miriam Golden, and Devesh Tiwari found that India’s political parties are more likely to field candidates who face criminal allegations in districts where illiteracy rates are higher, and such candidates depress turnout. This they attribute to shady politicians preferring to stand where it is easier to intimidate opponents’ supporters away from voting.

Simplifying voting procedures is the first step to ensuring that illiterates can cast informed and valid votes. India pioneered voting with symbols in 1952. (New parties must now choose from an unappealing list of still-available symbols, including the toothbrush and the nail-clipper.) Many African countries put photos as well as names on the ballot paper; Gambians vote by dropping marbles in drums blazoned with candidates’ faces. The marble strikes a bell inside to ensure only one vote is cast; to avoid confusion, bicycles are banned near to polling stations on election day.

Electronic voting machines can help, but only Bhutan, Brazil, France, India and Venezuela use them nationwide. Until the late 1990s Brazilian voters had to write their candidate’s name or electoral number on the ballot. Nowadays, they need only type a candidate’s number on a voting machine the size of a cash register, and confirm their choice after seeing a photograph. The machines’ introduction cut the share of spoilt votes from 23% to 11%.

Voter-education campaigns matter, too. Kenya has an automated helpline explaining how to vote. Face-to-face methods include lessons using picture guides, street theatre and election-day simulations. A door-to-door campaign in a rural area of Pakistan where less than 20% of women had been to school saw more women voting and fewer picking the same candidates as their male relatives. But voter education is weak in most places, says David Carroll of the Carter Centre in Atlanta, which monitors elections worldwide.

Thomas Fujiwara of Princeton University used the phased introduction of voting machines in Brazil to study their effects on health-care spending: regions where they were being used spent more than those yet to make the switch. He concluded that by making the votes of poor, illiterate voters more likely to count, the machines encouraged politicians to cater to their concerns. Screening debates between candidates at polling stations in Sierra Leone boosted the showing of better-qualified politicians. In Benin, where campaign rallies are all about distributing cash and promises of patronage, holding town-hall meetings instead cut clientelism among voters. The very steps that elicit informed votes from those who cannot read seem to make for better election outcomes all around.

Abhishek Kumar contributed reporting from Mumbai