Vote for nobody

[Will Morton]

Justin wrote:

>On 2004-09-06T06:22:29-0700, Sarad AV wrote:
>  
>
>>the election commision of india had a proposal to the
>>govt. that the voter should be able to vote for 'none
>>of the above'. Though one can predict that such a
>>proposal will never be approved by the government, it
>>makes a lot of sense. Is any other democratic country
>>seriously thinking of implementing such an option?
>>    
>>
>
>
>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."
>
>The 50% of the U.S. population which doesn't vote is also voting "none
>of the above" in a way.  There's a difference in that some non-voters
>may slightly prefer one candidate over another, but _assuming that
>everyone has an ideal candidate_ they'd be willing to go to the polls
>for, not voting is the same as saying all the candidates are
>significantly less than the ideal.
>  
>
    The difference being that in a system such as Sarad describes, if 
'None of the above' gets more votes than any candidate, the election is 
declared void and a re-election is called (possibly excluding any of the 
candidates from the first round, depending on the details); hence, the 
50% of the population who think 'they're all fvckers' have a reason to 
go to the polls.

    I've experienced such a system in action (within a student body) and 
it works well, provided you like your democracy to be loud and 
participatory.  For this reason it's unlikely to be implemented by an 
incumbent government, though I guess it's possible an uber-populist like 
Chavez or Lula might consider it.

    W