The Right to Spoiling your Vote

gom

None of the Above Campaign

Supporting democracy also means allowing people to choose. At present people have a limited choice when it comes to election time. We are presented with a list of hopefuls and we must vote for one or more of them. IF there are none we like we are encouraged to vote for the one we least hate.
Vote Spoiling is used as a means of protest at the fact that none of the candidates on your polling card are representiative of your views, asperations and desires for Local, National or European Society.

One of the reasons for introducing Electronic voting was to counter the rise in spoiled votes. None of the Above Campaign was established to campaign for such an option. If you don't support any of the above candidates you could demonstrate this legitamitly.

What would happen if 'none of the above' won the election?
You would return nominations and have another vote. If you could never pick a candidate the authorities would just have to accept that the people of said constituancy voted time and time again for none of the above and leave them to anarchy. After a period of anarchy the people might get more politically active and you would have a higher turn out in the next election. Or they could all be dead from 'Law of the Jungle' politics ruining their lives.

Personally I belief that voting should be manditory in all democracies. You should have more than 1 day to vote. Preferibly a whole weekend. If it is to be electronic it should be introduced by an independent commission and not the minister for wasteful living and the FF director of local elections Martin Cullen. There should be a VVAT(Voter Varifible Audit Trail)(Paper Trail). Transfers should not be done as they presently are by statistics but actually counted(its a computer stupid ).
If mandatory voting is a reality then the right to choose noneoftheabove should be a part of this - anything less would be more undemocratic than the present system.

Zulu

I tried to spoil my vote here - but I couldn't.

lucernarian

Yes, people should have a right to express their dissatisfaction with candidates. Its not our fault that we can't trust them.

FX Meister

People do express their dissatisfaction with candidates. I did the tally at the last local and EU elections and there were a huge amount of ballot papers that had no mark on them at all. I presume these were people who didn't want to vote for any of the candidates yet still went to their polling station and used their right to vote without actually voting.

Zombrex

I remember reading somewhere that people were calling for a system like you metion ("none-of-the-above") to be introduced to electronic voting system. Think it might have been in the US. It was for the exact same reason you mention, to register an offical protest to the election. The advantage of spoiled votes is that they are counted and a matter of record (AFAIK)

I would agree with included a option to spoil ones vote

ArthurDent

what do you mean by institutionalised?

I certainly agree that people should be allowed a protest to the choices on offer and have heard that at the last presidential election Dustin the Turkey polled as high as 20% in some ballot boxes.

If elecronic voting comes in will people be able to spoil their vote?

Zulu

Working as a S/W tester - the taughts of electronic voting coupled with people like G.W.Bush/Cheany/Rumbsfelt and the rest of the neo-con shower and dodgy characters scattered around the world, really REALLY scares the sh1t out of me.

arcadegame2004

I am against vote-spoiling. At the end of the day someone has to govern us.

But of course, should "non of the above" win, I am quite prepared to take over the mantle if the people wish...

grumpytrousers

I am against vote-spoiling. At the end of the day someone has to govern us.

Brilliant. "I shall govern you as I have been found to be the least objectionable among this field of eejits"

Hardly what the the proponents of Universal Suffrage had in mind...

But of course, should "non of the above" win, I am quite prepared to take over the mantle if the people wish...

Hmmm...A cursory look at your Karma Count suggests otherwise, but I could be wrong.

My own take would be that even if NOTA 'won' the election, the highest polling person(s) would *still* take the seat or whatever, but would effectively be judged the next time around by the comparison of NOTA votes compared to the other 'real people'...

Re Zulus comment - having done the SW testing in a former life I have to concur. I wouldn't trust half the stuff that we trotted out, and we didn't even have an evil oil-grabbing neo-con agenda...:D

chewy

well im sure i mentioned this before during evoting threads but i like there ron idea (can't remember what it stands for)
but if "ron" wins you reballot and it apparently causes a bit more thought by the electees?

grumpytrousers

chewy wrote:

well im sure i mentioned this before during evoting threads but i like there ron idea (can't remember what it stands for)
but if "ron" wins you reballot and it apparently causes a bit more thought by the electees?

Fair enough. But don't you run the risk of having constant re-elections. I mean, take that to it's logical conclusion. FF puts forward 2 muppets, FG same, labour, pd and SF 1 each. And NOTA wins.

If you just have a re-run of the election with the same candidates, what's changed. More babies have been kissed, more vague promises made, more people hacked off outside supermarket/post-office/STD clinic. You're also talking about an extended timeline during which a given constituency might have no effective representation.

If the line-up of candidates is actually changed, then it'd take even longer...

Sparks

There's an error here. Spoiling your vote is NOT the same as voting for "none of the above". A spoilt vote is simply discarded, it represents nothing more than a waste of the voters time, legally speaking. You might have 80% of the population turning up to vote for Dustin the Turkey, but at the end of the day, legally, it doesn't affect the outcome of the voting. 80% voting for "none of the above", on the other hand, means that there are legal consequences - usually involving a second election with a different set of candidates.

And I gave my name to the None of the Above petition months before the local elections

Flukey

It still makes a point though Sparks. They may be discarded but even spoilt votes are counted for the purpose of the overall stats. At the final declaration we are always told how many votes were spoilt, so there is some recognition of them. During the count, the tallymen and party reps will see some of the things that may be written on the spoilt ballot papers. Some votes are spoilt unintentionally. I have never spoilt my vote, but I think people should have the right to do so, if that is what they want. After all, it is a free country. We can choose not to vote or to go to the polling station and do what we want when we get there in terms of how we use our vote.

Gordon

Personally I think you should have made the poll

No
Yes, But only if voting was mandatory
None of the above

or

Yes
No
Yes, But only if voting was mandatory
Atari Jaguar

tbh

Victor

chewy wrote:

well im sure i mentioned this before during evoting threads but i like there ron idea (can't remember what it stands for) but if "ron" wins you reballot and it apparently causes a bit more thought by the electees?

"ReOpen Nominations". It's used in UCD students union elections.

The problem with multi-seat constituencies. If for example the results were FF 2, FF 1, Lab 1, RON 1. Having a "by-election" for the fifth seat would likely hand that seat to FF.

chewy

well they must have thought of that ?