by Gary Hoover
Director, Center for State Policy, Free Congress Foundation
Policy Insights Number 521, December 1993
Are you tired of politics as usual? Sick of choosing the lesser of two evils? Want to throw the rascals out, send a message, vent the spleen? What can a frustrated voter do? Vote for "None of the Above." The exercise is a positive way to channel voter outrage but still reinforce citizen responsibility to vote, even when the choices leave voters cold.
The concept of NOTA is simple. Suppose voters learn something about both major candidates in the months after their nomination that disaffects them--- makes them want to reject both of them. If more votes are cast for NOTA than for the candidates, a special election would then be held with new contestants. Political parties would nominate new candidates by whatever method they desire---provided that candidates who had lost to NOTA could not be nominated for that term. By threatening incumbents and contenders alike, NOTA would introduce real choice into elections and eventually force candidates to address the issues seriously.
Why should citizens only be able to vote "yes" for someone or abstain? In the act of voting, a citizen not only chooses someone to govern, but also gives consent to be governed. Sometimes a voter may want to withhold consent. If enough people refuse to give consent, that will so withdraw the sense of desperately-needed legitimacy from politicians that it might bludgeon them into cleaning up their act.
NOTA would be far more effective than campaign-finance reform in reducing the overwhelming advantages of incumbency. Incumbents are bolstered by their high name recognition, by institutional perks like franking and by a whopping contrast in campaign finances. A study conducted by Common Cause found that only 5 percent of the races for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 were financially competitive.
This disparity translates into an extraordinarily high re-election rate for incumbents. In 1988, 98 percent of all incumbents were returned to Congress. An analysis concluded that a congressman was more likely to die during his term than be defeated in that year. In 1992, when candidates faced redistricting, a House bank scandal and financial incentives to retire early, those incumbents seeking office still won 93 percent of the time.
In many races, second-rate incumbents win by beating third-rate challengers. A big NOTA vote against an entrenched incumbent would increase the chances of recruiting serious challengers the next time around. And moneyed interests might not invest so heavily in incumbents if their longevity was no longer guaranteed.
Many voters would embrace the idea of NOTA. In 1990, 52 percent of Texas voters told the Gallup poll that, if possible, they would have voted for NOTA instead of either gubernatorial candidate Republican Clayton Williams or Democrat Ann Richards. Louisiana voters would have welcomed the option to vote for NOTA in their 1991 race for governor between the born-again Nazi David Duke and the unapologetic, convicted criminal Edwin Edwards. In a Mason-Dixon poll taken just before the vote, 66 percent of the Louisiana voters wished the state had a "None of the Above" line on its ballot. In a hypothetical runoff election against Duke and Edwards, NOTA finished with 30 percent of the vote. Ironically, just months before that election, the Louisiana legislature rejected a proposal to add NOTA to the state's ballots.
We can learn a lesson from the former Communist nations of Eastern Europe on how to use NOTA to reinvigorate democracy. Both Poland and the Soviet Union have used a form of NOTA. As John Fund and Jim Coyne explain in their book Cleaning House, "In the 1989 semifree elections in Poland, voters were able to cross off the names they rejected---every name if they wished. This allowed them to defeat even the unopposed Communist incumbents, such as the sitting Polish prime minister, because they didn't get the required absolute majority, or because less than half the electorate voted. In the Soviet Union, new elections with new candidates had to be held in 200 out of 1,500 races for the Congress of People's Deputies. In the runoff elections, over one hundred Communist incumbents were defeated." Boris Yeltsin has said the Soviets' version of NOTA "helped convince the people they had real power even in a rigged election and played a role in building true democracy."
The United States has some experience with NOTA. In the 1992 presidential primaries, 31 percent of voters in South Dakota chose to vote for "Uncommitted Delegates" rather than President Bush. In Kansas, an actual "None of the Above" line was on the ballot and it drew 16 percent, finishing ahead of Jerry Brown. The newly formed California Green Party allows its primary voters a NOTA choice in selecting party nominees. In June 1992, in a Los Angeles state assembly district, NOTA beat the one candidate on the ballot, 55 to 45 percent.
Many states also use a version of NOTA for judicial elections: sitting judges must win confirmation from voters in an up or down referendum. The vast majority of judges win confirmation, but they can lose if they are making the laws rather than merely applying them; just ask California's former Chief Justice Rose Bird.
Nevada has used a non-binding NOTA option for the past 17 years. In 1980, NOTA narrowly lost to Jimmy Carter in the presidential primary but beat out Ted Kennedy for second place. In 1990, it came in second in both primaries for governor. Since Nevada's law does not require a new election if it wins, NOTA is strictly a symbolic protest vote. Even so, NOTA has had an impact on Nevada politics. Don Mello, a former state legislator who authored the law providing the ballot option, says NOTA "is one way for the people to tell the power structure they are not happy. If two rascals are running for the same office, and neither belongs there, why would you want to vote for either one? If you don't vote at all, your vote is not tallied. A vote for None Of The Above is."
Support for NOTA has come from both liberals and conservatives. On the left, Nation magazine, the Boston Globe and Ralph Nader endorse it. On the right, supporters include the Wall Street Journal and the Manchester Union-Leader. Ralph Nader believes a NOTA with teeth could increase voter turnout by giving disenchanted citizens an opportunity to vote "against" the existing candidates and "for" a new election.
Political scientists are intrigued by the idea of offering voters the option of NOTA. Curtis Gans, head of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, opposes term limits but favors NOTA. So does Seymour Martin Lipset, noted political scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Lipset says NOTA would be an American version of the "no confidence" vote that frequently brings down parliamentary governments in Europe.
Lou Watkins, NOTA researcher and wife of retired U.S. Congressman Wes Watkins states, "Opposition to NOTA is primarily based on the assumption that its use would be disruptive to the political process or to the political system." If available, would NOTA be disruptive to the process? "Well," Watkins proclaims, "it would be disruptive to the candidates who it beat."
Tilman Bishop, a state senator in Colorado, introduced legislation last February that would create a NOTA line on the state's ballot. In fact, NOTA legislation was introduced in seven state legislatures in 1993 but never voted out of their respective committees. Why? Because career politicians abhor NOTA--- which makes voters more determined to examine it.
Obviously both parties are too comfortable with the current situation to enact anything so dramatic to enhance the democratic process. The best way to get things started is through the initiative and referendum process, which is now available in 25 states. In the others, citizens will have to pressure their state legislators, perhaps by mounting widespread write-in campaigns or leaving their ballots blank. If a number of states independently enact a NOTA provision, the others might follow or join in passing a constitutional amendment, in the same manner that direct election of senators was brought about at the turn of the century.
We Americans proclaim a steadfast belief in freedom of choice. NOTA represents an important choice that voters should have. When confronted with the option of bad versus worse, NOTA would allow people to say. "Give me a better choice." Isn't that what American democracy should be about? NOTA will not make democracy perfect but simply better. In his bold address to Congress in January 1990, Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, declared that democracy "will always be no more than an ideal. One may approach it as one would the horizon . . . in this sense, you. too, are merely approaching democracy." As NOTA proponent Randy Kehler commented about Havel's statement: "That was a generous assessment. If we really want to approach it, rather than let it slip further and further away, we had better get busy."