The Funding of Elections

In one line

Elections cost money, the Constitution says almost nothing about where that money is to come from, and nearly all the working law on the subject has been built by judges out of one sentence in article 19(1)(a).

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Constitution guarantees adult suffrage and vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections in the Election Commission, but it fixes no limit on what may be spent on an election and regulates no donation. Those questions are left to Parliament. The constitutional discipline that exists comes from the freedom of speech and expression in article 19(1)(a), out of which the Supreme Court has drawn a right of the voter to know the assets, liabilities and criminal antecedents of the person asking for his vote. In People's Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India the Court struck down a provision by which Parliament had tried to cap that disclosure, holding that a blanket ban on the dissemination of information beyond what the statute itself named could not stand.

Why the law has this at all

Two propositions sit uneasily together in a democracy, and funding is where they collide.

The first is that every vote counts the same. Article 326 puts elections to the House of the People and to every Legislative Assembly on the basis of adult suffrage, and article 325 forbids a separate roll on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex. One person, one vote, one value.

The second is that money is not shared out one person, one share. A candidate who spends fifty times what his rival spends reaches fifty times as many voters. The formal equality of the ballot then sits on top of a gross inequality in the ability to be heard, and whoever paid for the campaign acquires a claim on whoever won it.

The law's answers are of three kinds. Cap the spending. Regulate the giving, so it is known who paid and how much. Replace private money with public money, the State funding proposal. India has tried the first, done the second badly, and not tried the third.

What the Constitution says, and what it does not say

Article 324(1) is headed Superintendence, direction and control of elections to be vested in an Election Commission, and provides that "the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls for, and the conduct of, all elections to Parliament and to the Legislature of every State and of elections to the offices of President and Vice-President held under this Constitution shall be vested in a Commission".

Read the words carefully. They are wide, unspecific, and say nothing about money. "Superintendence, direction and control" is a grant of power to run elections; whether it also authorises the Commission to compel a candidate to disclose what he owns the article does not say. On the Commission's powers generally, see [The Election Commission].