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<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">NOTA is used differently
in different countries and different settings. In September 2013
India’s Supreme Court upheld NOTA as a way for a voter to reject
the full slate of candidates, replacing an older process where the
voter could reject the full slate, but not in confidence. The
disagreement in understanding here, in this NCSG election, was
whether NOTA should only apply to the whole slate, forcing a full
slate re-nomination and vote, or should apply to each individual
candidate. <br>
<br>
Unfortunately that voting process choice was not settled before
the election, and it is particularly relevant when the number of
candidates equals the number of positions. The usual process of
simply not voting for whom one does not prefer fails to capture
the level of objection to unpopular candidates in such cases as
this.<br>
<br>
Here, for example, if the third candidate gets only 10% (or 1%) of
the vote that candidate is still elected. With individual
candidate NOTA a candidate with NOTA votes greater than support
votes would not be elected. Of course, in this case that would
leave NCSG short one seat on the GNSO. A proper prior NCSG
agreement on how to handle NOTA could handle that by, for example,
calling for a subsequent election for that one seat. <br>
<br>
The lesson learned here is that NCSG has some voting procedure
homework to do before the next NCSG election. <br>
<br>
Sam L NPOC/csih<br>
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