Thinking quietly about the role of NOTA in elections.
Voting NOTA is a terrible idea when you feel you only have bad candidates - it is not just an exercise in futility, it is actually harmful to democracy. By giving an equal score of "0" to all candidates, the NOTA voter is effectively equating the worst criminal politician in the candidate pool to the least harmful.
Every NOTA vote by a "frustrated voter" translates to one less negative vote for the worst candidate, whose own supporters will also never pick NOTA. Express your preference for the pickpocket over the armed bandit if those are the choices you have, else only the bandit supporter votes will matter. The winning candidate will almost surely never be NOTA, and as the NOTA percentage goes up, it may actually increase the probability of the worst candidates winning.
All candidates may be bad, but not all are equally bad. Always vote, no matter how inconvenient and how poor the choices are, and always optimize by picking the 'best among the available options' every time, no matter how distasteful. That is the only way to continually weed out the worst and promote reform.
Suppose you only have good candidates, will you still vote NOTA since "all are good, can't pick out any one"? Unlikely. You would endorse the better over the merely good and fairly reward merit. Likewise, when you have only bad candidates, use your vote to penalize the more terrible candidates. An informed decision has to be made even here. NOTA votes appear to be especially harmful when the candidate pool is bad. Exercising the NOTA option in large numbers may produce even more obnoxious politicians asking for your vote in the next election. Remember Karnataka 2018.
Voting NOTA is a terrible idea when you feel you only have bad candidates - it is not just an exercise in futility, it is actually harmful to democracy. By giving an equal score of "0" to all candidates, the NOTA voter is effectively equating the worst criminal politician in the candidate pool to the least harmful.
Every NOTA vote by a "frustrated voter" translates to one less negative vote for the worst candidate, whose own supporters will also never pick NOTA. Express your preference for the pickpocket over the armed bandit if those are the choices you have, else only the bandit supporter votes will matter. The winning candidate will almost surely never be NOTA, and as the NOTA percentage goes up, it may actually increase the probability of the worst candidates winning.
All candidates may be bad, but not all are equally bad. Always vote, no matter how inconvenient and how poor the choices are, and always optimize by picking the 'best among the available options' every time, no matter how distasteful. That is the only way to continually weed out the worst and promote reform.
Suppose you only have good candidates, will you still vote NOTA since "all are good, can't pick out any one"? Unlikely. You would endorse the better over the merely good and fairly reward merit. Likewise, when you have only bad candidates, use your vote to penalize the more terrible candidates. An informed decision has to be made even here. NOTA votes appear to be especially harmful when the candidate pool is bad. Exercising the NOTA option in large numbers may produce even more obnoxious politicians asking for your vote in the next election. Remember Karnataka 2018.
Nota should in fact should be interpreted to be powerful tool when the candidates' work is not satisfacyory. Reasoning givenbin the article is biased towards the benefit of the parties rather than talking about ways to address the people's valid demands.
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