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