NOTA: A Winning Cause

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.