Know Your Candidate

Now, You Can Vote Smart

Smartvote is a campaign supported by different voluntary organizations and citizens, without any political affiliation, created to provide information regarding  candidates standing for election at various levels, enabling the public to make an informed choice. Today we vote for a candidate for several reasons. Some of there are:
•Strong bias towards a party - 'We don't care who the candidate is, I will always vote for Party X' 
•Community bias -' He belongs to my community, I will vote only for him' 
•Anti-ncumbency vote -'The ruling party hasn't done a thing, I will vote for the strongest opposition party'. 
"All the wrong reasons." 
If you vote for the party regardless of the quality of the candidate, then there is no incentive for the party to pick a good candidate. We will mostly end up with winnable corrupt candidates. If you vote for someone because of his community then you are encouraging community  based politics and you may end up with a non-performer. 
You need to vote for the best candidate for the job. Someone with a good biodata, maybe a person with a good record of community service or with impeccable honesty, someone with a proven administrative record. 
Your 'Smart Vote' will give our country a great administrator, manager, leader. We at smartvote believe that once we make good people win seats in the parliament, the 'system' has a better chance to correct itself. Parties will ensure good people get tickets and not undeserving candidates that are winnable because they have the support of a certain community or have financial clout to win votes. 
Smartvote will do its best to provide you with in-depth information on candidates so that you can make an informed choice. The data will be mined from that available on the public domain. All the facts will be collated and presented in an unbiased user friendly form.
Vision: All the elected representatives in urban India will be elected by citizens making well informed choices. Improving  the quality of  representatives will lead to good governance of our Country.
Why Vote?
We are silent witnesses to the everyday horrors that surround us: Indeed we have become indifferent to the suffering of our fellow humans. Is there no solution I ask myself. Is there nothing I can do? Am I a voiceless, helpless person ? Or is the power in my hands and I have chosen not to use it? Yes, that is what I have done by not voting.
We are a country rich in resources, the richest resource being the talent and brilliance of our people. Yet how many of us have the opportunity of reaching our potential? Survival, from day to day, leaves little time for education and the opportunity to nurture talent. Who will care for us? Netas are busy lining their pockets. The crores allocated for primary education, essentials meant for the PDS are all diverted. The lure of lucre is irresistible. Are there no leaders who will work for the people? Yes there are. But we are too busy in our own busy lives in our own busy world to go and exercise our franchise.
There is no escape from the fact that we must engage with the political world to improve the world around us which is the only way to improve the quality of our own life. Each one of us is responsible for what India is today, we made this happen; we are the cause of what we complain of. By not voting we chose. We allowed politicians to be elected for the wrong reasons, voted into power without any merit. 
We only get the leaders we deserve. We, the people have the power to create a revolution in the quality of elected leaders, let us use that power. 
We must learn about every candidate who has chosen to stand from our constituency and vote only for competence. By doing so, we will trigger a change in elected candidates and therefore in the government. Let politicians realise that there are many thousands of us in every constituency who will vote every time only for integrity, ability, performance and service of the candidate.

This is a process that can only start with us, we must choose the best among the available candidates and inspire, by our actions, those waiting on the sidelines-- the good, capable and incorruptible, that they too have a chance to win.
That is why, we, through this campaign called SMARTVOTE seek to provide a common platform for all candidates in a constituency, irrespective of party affiliation, monetary backing and religious/caste association. We wish to enable an informed choice, involving ourselves constructively in understanding the people we will vote for, assessing their capabilities, and giving them a chance to explain their vision to us. We invite you to take up the most important office in our democracy-that of the citizen. An office you will enter through the act of marking the ballot.
"We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business: we say he has no business here at all"-Pericles