The Presidential elections were held on 17 July 2017. On Thu, July 20, Ram Nath Kovind of the BJP was declared elected by over 65% of the votes.
During a conversation with a colleague on the results he mentioned in passing that the Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections in India are not based on the simple method of the winner being the person receiving the maximum number of votes, but was based on the concept of the person being elected needing to get at least 50% + 1 of the total valid votes. I was intrigued. I had no idea about this.
I did know that the elections were based on voting by elected members of the state and central legislative bodies, and that there was a different weightage to each of them. Naturally I looked a little more and what I found was interesting and intriguing.
The article that explains it best is one by India Today. Here's a summary from that article.
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How does India elect its president? An in-depth guide
Dev Goswami
New Delhi, July 1, 2017
On July 17, 4,896 electors will cast a total of 10,98,903 votes to elect the next President of India.
The electors will include all elected Members of Legislative Assemblies and Members of Parliament (Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha). People nominated to a state's legislative assembly or to the Rajya Sabha cannot vote in the Presidential election 2017.
The process for electing the President of India is quite unlike elections to the Lok Sabha or a state Legislative Assembly.
For example, each elector's vote is valued in hundreds - a vote cast by one Uttar Pradesh MLA, for example, will be valued at 208. The vote of a Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha) will be valued at 708.
But, it ensures that each state gets a fair say in the election, in proportion to its population, and that the candidate who is elected President is one who has the support of the majority of electors.
STEP 1: Nomination
Each candidate considering a run for the President of India's office were supposed to file their nominations by June 28. The candidates were also required to fork over Rs 15,000 as deposit and submit a signed list of 50 proposers and 50 seconders. The proposers and seconders can be any of the 4,896 electors eligible to vote in the Presidential election 2017.
An elector can only propose or second one candidate's name.
STEP 2: Voting
On July 17, all elected MLAs, in their respective state and union territory capitals, and all elected MPs, at Parliament, will be given ballot papers (green coloured for MPs and pink coloured for MLAs) to cast their vote. They will also be given special pens, which is the only instrument they can use to record their votes.
Each ballot paper will contain the name of all candidates who are contesting the Presidential election. The electors will proceed to indicate their preference for each candidate - marking '1' for the candidate they most prefer as President, '2' for the candidate who is their second preference, and so on.
An elector isn't required to mark preferences for all Presidential candidates. He/she has to only mark their first preference for their vote to be considered in the election.
STEP 3: Segregating ballot papers
On July 20, the Returning Office Anoop Mishra will verify all ballots and begin the counting process using the ballots that are valid.
The ballot papers will be taken up state-wise and allotted to each candidate's tray depending on whose name appears as the first preference. For example, if an MLA from Uttar Pradesh marks Ram Nath Kovind as his/her first preference that MLA's ballot paper will go to Kovind's tray.
Then the ballots papers of the Members of Parliament are similarly distributed. For example, all ballot papers of MPs who mark Meira Kumar as their first preference will go to Kumar's tray.
STEP 4: Counting votes
The total number of votes that a Presidential candidate garners is calculated by adding up the value of all the ballots in which a particular candidate receives a first preference.
The value of each ballot paper depends on who cast the votes. The ballot paper of a UP MLA will be valued at 208, of an Andhra Pradesh MLA at 159 and of an MLA from Sikkim at 7.
The value of the ballot paper of any MP (from Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha) is 708. Adding up the value of each ballot paper that is in a candidate's tray gives the total number of votes polled for that candidate.
STEP 5: Deciding the winner
The winner of the Presidential election is not the person who gets the most number of votes, but the person who gets more votes than a certain quota.
The quota is decided by adding up the votes polled for each candidate, dividing the sum by 2 and adding '1' to the quotient.
The candidate who polls more votes than the quota is the winner. In case, no one gets more votes than the quota, then the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated.
Then, the eliminated candidates' ballot papers are distributed between the remaining hopefuls based on those ballot papers' second preference choice. The process of counting the total votes for each candidate is then repeated to see if any one polls above the quota.
The process continues until someone's votes tally up to more than the quota, or until just one candidate is left after the constant eliminations, at which point that person is declared as the winner of the President of India.
You can read the entire article at:
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/how-india-elects-its-president/1/991893.html
