[NCSG-EL-REF] None of the Above

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Jun 26 10:57, Dan Krimm via Election-reform (election-reform at lists.ncsg.is) wrote:

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

It is somewhat unusual, yes.

> 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.)

Yes. For Chair election that would work. I'm not sure it'd be useful
though.

> 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.

That's what we did last time (and apparently before that as well,
although it was never explicitly stated).

> 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?

Correct. Reading the charter the simplest reading I can think of is it
should be handled like when a councillor resigns midterm, that is, EC
would appoint a temporary alternate until next regular elections (3.2).
But the EC could also define a procedure for the situation, including
special elections.

Likewise in Chair election: if NotA wins all candidates and that's
interpreted to mean they won't get elected, it'd fall upon the EC to
elect the new Chair. It would be good to have a procedure defined
for that situation (new elections or whatever).

Having procedures defined in advance would have the crucial
advantage that it could save the day in case EC cannot agree
(NCSG EC decisions are made by full consensus, e.g., unanimously).

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen