The US-isation of India?
R Arun Kumar
THE recent Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar can rightly be described as an exercise in disenfranchisement. Strikingly, there are many similarities between this exercise conducted by the Election Commission of India and similar actions that have occurred – and continue to occur – in the United States. A comparison of the two clearly reveals that far-right forces across the world operate in similar ways and with similar agendas.
THE US CASE
Voter suppression has long been a staple tactic of right-wing forces in the US. After the Civil Rights Movement, led by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, African Americans were legally granted full voting rights through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, this shift was unpalatable to conservatives and white supremacists, who continually sought ways to curtail the voting rights of African Americans, indigenous people, women, the poor and immigrants. The elite have often wanted voting to remain a privilege rather than a fundamental right.
Since they could no longer legally deny voting on the basis of race, gender, or income, a range of devious strategies emerged to restrict voter access. Tactics included stringent identification card requirements, complex registration procedures, and disqualifications for missing multiple elections. A US Appeals Court noted in 2016 that such bureaucratic hurdles were “deliberately constructed” to suppress votes from disadvantaged communities, specifically observing that they “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”
Conservatives, particularly the Republican Party, have pursued voter suppression to protect their political interests by discouraging participation from poor and marginalised groups. Initially, the Democratic Party attempted to resist these efforts by proposing reforms and seeking to strengthen voting rights legislation. However, even within the Democratic ranks, enthusiasm for broadening the electorate was limited. Vice-President Walter Mondale, during the Carter administration, admitted that “even some members of his own party saw little incentive to push for a dramatic expansion of the electorate.” In a letter to President Carter, he expressed his disappointment, writing: “There is, unfortunately, no real constituency for this bill.”
After the introduction of neoliberalism, voting rights for the poor and disadvantaged came under further attack. Some progressive-leaning groups attempted to resist neoliberal policies by actively campaigning for the expansion of voting rights. They believed that by ensuring the political participation of the poor, the weakening of the welfare State could be challenged and reversed. The Democrats initially appeared sympathetic to such causes – particularly because Ronald Reagan, a Republican, was President at the time, and they were seeking a return to power.
However, once elected, President Bill Clinton enacted a thoroughly watered-down version of the very bill the Democrats had previously championed. The reason is simple: the Democrats, too, had by then embraced neoliberalism. The ruling classes have effectively ensured that both major political parties in the US avoid confronting neoliberal policies. As a result, both parties have, in different ways, worked to suppress popular anger and limit democratic expression through elections, often by supporting or tolerating voter suppression measures.
THE SAVE ACT – A LATEST ATTACK
Immediately after Donald Trump began his second term as president in January 2025, the attack on voting rights escalated further. A new bill, titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, was reintroduced in the US House of Representatives. This legislation is designed to make voter registration far more difficult for poor and disadvantaged populations. It mandates that all Americans must “prove their citizenship status by presenting documentation in person” when registering to vote or updating voter registration information. Specifically, the law would require individuals to use a passport or birth certificate to verify their citizenship.
Reports indicate that these requirements are incredibly burdensome, even in a highly developed capitalist country like the United States. The reasons are clear: more than 140 million American citizens do not possess a passport (approximately half the population), and around 69 million women who have adopted their spouse’s surname do not have a birth certificate that matches their legal name! Moreover, the law mandates in-person appearance not just for new registrations, but also for updates such as a change of address.
These reports emphasise that the proposed system is “unworkable for millions of Americans, including over 60 million people living in rural areas. Shockingly, even government-issued documents like a driver's license, military ID, or tribal ID are deemed insufficient proofs under this legislation.
The parallels with what is happening in Bihar are hard to ignore.
In fact, the similarities do not end there. Under existing US federal law, providing the last four digits of one’s Social Security number or a driver’s licence number on a voter registration application is sufficient proof of citizenship and eligibility to vote. In the current system, it is the responsibility of election officials to verify the authenticity of the submitted documents and the eligibility of registered voters. However, the new SAVE Act completely inverts this process. It shifts the burden onto citizens, requiring them to prove their citizenship and voting eligibility. Is the Election Commission of India (ECI) mimicking these restrictive US laws?
Surveys examining the educational and economic backgrounds of passport holders reveal telling disparities. Among individuals who dropped out of education after high school, only 25 per cent have a passport. Similarly, only 20 per cent of those earning less than $50,000 per year have one. This clearly demonstrates that the working class and lower-income households are the most likely to be disenfranchised under the SAVE Act.
Leaders of the Republican Party, who currently control the House of Representatives, have stated that passing this legislation is a top priority for the current term. Their indifference to the disenfranchisement of the poor is unmistakable. Once again, class interests take precedence.
THE CASE OF GERRYMANDERING
Gerrymandering is another tactic used to manipulate election outcomes in favour of a particular political party. In the United States, gerrymandering refers to “the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into electoral districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections.” In India, we call a similar process as the delimitation exercise.
Recently, Texas made headlines when Democratic members of the state legislature (the Texas House of Representatives) left the state en masse. They took this drastic step to prevent Republicans from redrawing the state’s electoral map. The Republicans aim to alter constituency boundaries to make it more difficult for Democrats to win future elections. Donald Trump has been aggressively pushing for such redistricting efforts in multiple states to block Democratic victories.
While the standard practice in the US is to redraw electoral maps every ten years based on demographic changes recorded in the census, Trump is unwilling to wait. Instead, he is seeking immediate changes to secure a Republican majority in the House ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Gerrymandering in the US is often used to dilute the voting power of minorities, especially African Americans, whose electoral preferences typically favour the Democratic Party. District boundaries are strategically drawn to minimise the influence of these voters, effectively reducing their representation in legislative bodies. This is a deliberate strategy to limit the political power and representation of African Americans and other marginalised communities in the decision-making process.
It is important to recall what was done in Jammu and Kashmir, where the electoral map was redrawn to ensure a BJP majority in the Assembly. State institutions like the ECI were used to push through this process, with reason and logic conveniently cast aside to facilitate the BJP’s electoral advantage. That the BJP still failed to secure a majority, despite such brazen attempts to bypass democratic norms, speaks volumes about the depth of public anger against the party. The BJP is attempting to replicate the US practices in India.
In the US, a landmark Supreme Court ruling in the 2013 case of Shelby County Vs Holder dramatically altered voter registration laws. Following this judgment, nearly 16 million voters were purged from electoral rolls between 2014 and 2016, approximately 4 million more than were removed during the comparable period before the ruling (2006-2008). The primary reason cited for these removals was that voters ‘addresses could not be verified.’
Strangely, these so-called ‘electoral reforms’ are defended using the same rationale in both the US and India: eliminating fake voters or preventing voter fraud. However, what is actually taking place is a fraud on democracy itself. Whether in Bihar or in the US, lakhs of people are being disenfranchised on the pretext that they lack valid documentation.
All these measures expose the insecurity and intolerance of the ruling classes. In their effort to maintain unchallenged hegemony, they go to great lengths to hollow out whatever remains of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Our struggle should not be limited to merely resisting these attacks, it must go further – towards demanding the strengthening and expansion of real democracy.
