[NCSG-EL-REF] None of the Above

[Dan Krimm]

It's actually odd to me to see explicit No votes on a ballot (other than 
ballot propositions).

In a race where only one candidate can win the seat, a Yes for one is an 
implicit No for all the others.  If we had Yes-Abstain, where Abstain is 
interpreted as NOTA, and we required that a winner get more Yes votes 
than the abstentions, that would seem to work (except we may potentially 
need a process for a revote?). (Abstain would have to be an explicit 
vote, whereas no-vote is interpreted as a non-ballot for that race.)

In a multi-candidate race where more than one seat is open (top two or 
three, for example) we could determine that winners would still have to 
exceed abstentions to take the seat.

In both of these cases, we'd need provisions for how to handle seats 
that were left unfilled by the election -- some combination of temporary 
appointments (or extensions of term of current seat holders) and new 
elections?

Dan


On 6/26/17 10:42 AM, Tapani Tarvainen via Election-reform wrote:
> On Jun 26 10:12, Robin Gross (robin at ipjustice.org) wrote:
>
>> What we are actually after is a way to make sure that every
>> candidate faces a Yes or No option, so someone can’t win by default,
>> and there must actually be approval of the candidate by the
>> membership to be our representative.
> I don't think that's at all obvious.
>
> The reason most parliamentary elections and the like don't have
> negative votes is that minorities should be able to get their
> candidates elected even when majority doesn't like them.
> Mojority of voters should get majority of seats but only
> in proportion to the size of the majority.
>
> This is actually a fundamental philophical point in how
> we view our councillors' position. Does every councillor have
> to represent the entire stakeholder group or might they
> represent minority views, even unpopular ones?
>
> I note that the charter is explicit in protecting the
> representation of regions and genders. Are we sure there're
> no other minorities that might deserve to be represented?
>
> Situation with councillors is different than in, e.g., NCUC
> Executive Committee election, where seats are hardwired to regions.
>
> I don't have a hard position here, but it is something we
> should discuss, as it indeed pretty much determines what
> kind of NotA rule we should use.
>