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Date: | Tue, 23 Aug 2016 10:58:36 -0400 |
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NOTA is used differently in different countries and different settings.
In September 2013 India’s Supreme Court upheld NOTA as a way for a voter
to reject the full slate of candidates, replacing an older process where
the voter could reject the full slate, but not in confidence. The
disagreement in understanding here, in this NCSG election, was whether
NOTA should only apply to the whole slate, forcing a full slate
re-nomination and vote, or should apply to each individual candidate.
Unfortunately that voting process choice was not settled before the
election, and it is particularly relevant when the number of candidates
equals the number of positions. The usual process of simply not voting
for whom one does not prefer fails to capture the level of objection to
unpopular candidates in such cases as this.
Here, for example, if the third candidate gets only 10% (or 1%) of the
vote that candidate is still elected. With individual candidate NOTA a
candidate with NOTA votes greater than support votes would not be
elected. Of course, in this case that would leave NCSG short one seat on
the GNSO. A proper prior NCSG agreement on how to handle NOTA could
handle that by, for example, calling for a subsequent election for that
one seat.
The lesson learned here is that NCSG has some voting procedure homework
to do before the next NCSG election.
Sam L NPOC/csih
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