I agree with your conclusion here dear Sam.
The same exercise should be done for the NPOC too.
My 2.
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