Invalid votes remain a major concern in Graduate and Teacher MLC elections; the preferential voting system adds to voter confusion.
Hyderabad: With the February 27 polling day for the Legislative Council elections drawing near, political parties are intensifying efforts to ensure that graduates and teachers do not invalidate their votes. In past elections, invalid votes from graduates alone accounted for up to 10 per cent of the total votes polled.
This year, the Congress and BJP have fielded candidates for the Graduate MLC elections, while the BRS has opted not to contest. In the Teacher MLC elections, no major party has fielded candidates; instead, teacher unions affiliated with the Congress, BJP, and Left parties are in the running.
The elections will be held for the Medak-Nizamabad-Adilabad-Karimnagar graduates' constituency and the teacher's constituencies of Medak-Nizamabad-Adilabad-Karimnagar and Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda. Counting of votes will take place on March 3.
The system of preferential voting, where voters rank candidates in order of preference, is often misunderstood. This leads to mistakes, such as casting votes without ranking preferences, writing numbers in words instead of numerals, or using personal pens instead of the violet sketch pens provided by polling officials. These errors result in votes being declared invalid.
Invalid votes are particularly concerning as they could potentially alter the outcome of close contests. For example, the Congress and the BJP are engaged in a tight race for the Graduate MLC seats, and even a small number of invalid votes could shift the result. These votes may force officials to conduct a second preferential vote count, delaying the declaration of results.
Minister Ponnam Prabhakar is campaigning in districts and urging Graduate voters to exercise extreme caution. He stressed that the Congress has organised awareness programmes for voters over the next week, distributing pamphlets on the proper voting procedure. Additionally, digital and social media campaigns are being launched to educate voters on the nuances of preferential voting.
"We are making sure voters understand common mistakes, such as marking preferences incorrectly, using personal pens, or writing numbers in words," Prabhakar explained. "All these mistakes result in invalid votes."
While political parties acknowledge the challenge of training individual voters across multiple districts, some suggest that the introduction of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) could help address the problem. This would allow for easier and more efficient vote counting, eliminating the errors associated with manual voting.
Invalid
The graduate and teacher constituency Legislative Council polls have traditionally seen a high percentage of invalid votes
Graduates
Warangal-Nalgonda-Khammam
2015: 9.14 %
2021: 5.57 %
2024 Bypoll: 8.27%
Hyderabad-Mahbubnagar-Rangareddy
2021: 5.94%
Medak-Nizamabad-Adilabad-Karimnagar
2019: 9,932 votes invalid.
Teacher:
Medak-Nizamabad-Adilabad-Karimnagar
2019: 533 votes invalid
