Did your vote go to waste?

Prawin

Dec 18, 2017

Which symbol did you vote for in the proportional system in the House of Representatives elections held on December 26 and 27? Needless to say, no. It is a secret ballot, why open it? But you must know that your vote was wasted.

This time around one million votes have been wasted across the country. According to the data kept by the Election Commission on Sunday, exactly 9,96,985 votes were cast. This is not the number of votes cast, it is the number of votes cast. Even though it is Sadar, how come so many votes were not counted in the Sadar vote? Let's understand in detail.

According to the website of the commission, a total of 95 lakh 44 thousand 744 Sadar votes have been counted. In other words, so many votes have gone to different parties.

However, according to the Member of the House of Representatives Election Act, 2074, this number was not considered as the main vote in the distribution of seats. This is because sub-section 12 of section 60 of the Act states:

When counting the total Sadar votes, the votes received by the party receiving less than three percent votes will not be counted in the total votes received by the party. There were 44 parties that received less than three percent of the vote. There were only five parties that cut three percent.

UML 3173494

Nepali Congress 3128389

Maoists 1303721

Rashtriya Janata Party Nepal 472254

Federal Socialist Forum, Nepal 470201

The total number of votes received by these parties was calculated as only 85 lakh 48 thousand 59 and the seats were distributed to these parties only.

This means that the votes cast on the scales of discretionary sharing and all the election symbols below it were wasted. If all these parties had fought under the same symbol, they would have become the fourth largest party and won proportional seats.

One million votes were wasted in this way. In both the phases, the Election Commission had said that a total of 15.87 million votes had been cast. Out of that, about one and a half million votes have been cast for the proportional representation system of the House of Representatives.

Combining the two, 2.5 million votes have been wasted.

Was your vote wasted or did it work?