In the context of Indian general elections 2014:
What is NOTA:
The short-form stands for a default option of “None Of The Above”, as part of voting choice.
It means that, a voter has a valid choice of rejecting all
contesting candidates and explicitly calling out that, she/he doesn’t like to
choose anyone from the above list of candidates.
What is the big deal
about NOTA:
Choosing to vote for NOTA indicates that a voter has not
liked any of the candidates contesting
and they are not worthy of her/his vote.
As NOTA counts increase, it is a direct and clear signal
that all the candidates from national/local parties/Independents are non-worthy
to be an MP/MLA from a given
constituency.
In aggregation, this also gives a good signal to large
parties that, they will have to pick better candidates to represent them in a
constituency.
If the NOTA votes become significant, the EC or the Supreme
court could define better and more affirmative actions. Eg: re-election in that
constituency when count(NOTA) >
Winning candidate by current norms.
Why is NOTA a winning
cause:
As a voter, if we don’t have any worthy candidate,
registering our identification of “all
bad candidates”, is through voting for NOTA.
Assuming that,
there are ~20 constituencies all over India, where NOTA beats the winning
candidate, it becomes clear that the voters in those constituencies rejected
all candidates very numerically and clearly.
There are no other interpretations for this pattern of
voting.
There is good reason to believe that, this pattern is one and only best way to inform
India/world that, parties choose bad candidates in places for reasons known
only to them.
Again like said above, this is the best path to EC or
Supreme court swinging into action and defining more actionable outcome to NOTA
votes in coming elections.
Hence I am of the belief that NOTA is a winning cause for
this democracy.
