Vote for nobody

[Bill Stewart]

I think the US state of Nevada has "None of the above" as an option,
though I'm not sure the implementation of it.
The Libertarian Party in the US always has NOTA as a candidate
in internal elections, and sometimes NOTA wins and the job
goes unfilled until either there's a new election with new candidates
or some executive committee appoints somebody.

At 09:57 AM 9/6/2004, Justin wrote:
>If someone would vote for "none of the above" rather than write in
>his/her ideal candidate, that someone is a lazy oaf.  Everyone who
>writes in a candidate is voting "none of the above."

NOTA's a bit different - there may be a large plurality of voters
who don't like the major candidates, even if they don't agree
on who else they want.  In a election where you're voting for a party,
like most parliamentary governments use, voting NOTA is telling the parties
to run different candidates, so for instance you might want
the Labour Party to win but you don't like Tony Blair so you vote NOTA
in his home district.  In candidate-based elections,
you're telling the individual candidates that you don't like them.



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Bill Stewart  bill.stewart at pobox.com