The current political and electoral systems are plagued by numerous issues, such as criminality, corruption, cash and other enticements to voters, populist schemes, minority appeasement, caste and religion based politics, lack of fair representation for many sections of society, and voter apathy. The few solutions, such as reserved constituencies and campaign spending limits, that we have put in place to address these issues are clearly not working.

So, what can we do to make things better? For inspiration, let us look back to the 1990s—a time when the economy was in a similarly dire state, with the country teetering on the edge of economic bankruptcy. The solution was to open up the economy and dismantle archaic controls, which led to a remarkable transformation: the economy rebounded, becoming one of the most vibrant in the world, and within just three decades, India rose to become the fifth-largest economy globally.

We envision that a similar transformation can be achieved in the political system by fundamentally reshaping it with two groundbreaking changes:

1. Opening up all voters to all leaders and all leaders to all voters by eliminating the concept of territorial constituencies altogether, and
2. Granting multiple votes per voter instead of the current one vote per voter.

These changes form the cornerstone of a new system we propose, referred to as the ‘Open Elections’ system. This system ensures fair representation for people of all identities and interests, brings honest, sincere, and committed politicians back into the political framework, curbs criminality and corruption at both local and higher levels, and effectively addresses numerous other problems and issues, which we will discuss in detail.

In the accompanying paper OpenElections.pdf, we will present the details of this vision in a structured manner. We begin with a thorough examination of the problems and issues—both obvious and not so obvious—with the current system. Next, we will review the existing and proposed solutions and explain why they are not effective. Following this, we will provide a comprehensive description of the Open Elections System and its key components.

We will then illustrate how modern technologies, such as QR codes and touch screens, can be leveraged to implement this system. Subsequently, we will describe how it addresses the numerous issues of the current system, benefits voters, leaders, political parties, and the Election Commission in various ways, and paves the way for national progress and a stronger democracy. We conclude by presenting a roadmap for the implementation of the Open Elections System.