Indian election system simpler: CEC

The Indian electoral system is simpler and more uniform than that of the United States, Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy said on Wednesday.

• US election coverage | The South Asian vote

Krishnamurthy is in US as an "international observer" for the presidential polls.

"The Indian electoral system is simpler because of its uniformity with all the voters who are expected to reach the polling station to exercise their right to vote," Krishnamurthy told the BBC Hindi service on Tuesday night.

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In the US electoral system, he observed, in some states, voters chose a number of representatives while simultaneously expressing their opinions on various local public issues.

The speciality of the Indian system lay in its being a uniform, while in the US there were state to state and even county to county differences, he said. "In my opinion the US election system will gain by having a greater uniformity but for historical reasons this has not yet been possible," he said.

Compared to the Indian system where the central Election Commission conducts an election, in the US each state conducts the election. "This posed some problems but this is part of the evolution of democracy. Differences in their respective electoral processes are bound to exist as both India and the US are large democracies," he said.