This week, In­dia kicks off the largest elec­tion in world his­tory, with a re­cord 815 mil­lion people eli­gible to vote.

But how can such a massive op­er­a­tion in the di­verse, South Asi­an coun­try run smoothly enough to be one of the most peace­ful demo­crat­ic pro­cesses in the re­gion?

The an­swer is simple: time. Since there are so many voters in so many jur­is­dic­tions, some­times in re­mote loc­a­tions, In­dia al­lots nine sep­ar­ate days of vot­ing spread between April 7 and May 12 to ac­count for lo­gist­ic­al and se­cur­ity con­cerns. Some re­gions just need one day for vot­ing. Oth­ers need five days or more.

Voters in In­dia elect 543 mem­bers to its lower house, called Lok Sabha, every five years. Since In­dia uses a par­lia­ment­ary sys­tem, a party need a 272-seat ma­jor­ity to elect its prime min­is­ter.

The coun­try is plagued by polit­ic­al cor­rup­tion, but that doesn’t trickle down to elec­tions. The Eco­nom­ist ex­plains that pub­lic of­fi­cials take elec­tions ser­i­ously. They are good with “nar­rowly fo­cused tasks of lim­ited dur­a­tion,” they re­spond well to pub­lic scru­tiny, and the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion is in­de­pend­ent, pre­vent­ing bribes.