[NCSG-EL-REF] None of the Above

[Tapani Tarvainen]

Dear Grace,

On Jun 27 00:51, Grace Mutung'u via Election-reform (election-reform at lists.ncsg.is) wrote:

> For purposes of understanding the problem, would someone please explain
> .....What mischief was being cured by including the NOTA? Was it to
> encourage people to offer their candidacy, thereby avoiding only one
> candidate? Or was it simply to give people a chance to express themselves
> on candidacies, including those who were unopposed?

That is a very good question.

Which means it has no single answer: different people have different
ideas.

One is simply to offer people the option of not voting those they
don't know enough or care enough about. As our charter requires voting
for exactly N candidates, some NotA-type thing is needed to allow
abstaining.

Similar situation is when you desire to register disapproval or
dislike without actually preventing someone getting elected, in the
situation you don't like any candidate.

Another view is using NotA as a negative vote mechanism, a way of
preventing someone getting elected even when you have nobody you like
better running. This is Robin's position if I understood correctly,
although as she observed NotA is not a good mechanism for it,
as discussion around our last election demonstrated.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen