In the coming elections – may we please have (c) none of the above on the ballot
December 26th, 2011 by Ingrid Cliff
One of the things I love about Christmas is the chance to slow down and chat with friends and relatives. One of our debates this year focussed on the 2012 elections, and who were good candidates in our local areas.
This raised the fascinating thought – if elections test the preferences of the electorate, what would happen if every ballot paper had a box that could be ticked – “None of the above”.
Think about it for a minute. What would happen if we treated an election as a true market research test – where we were provided with a range of options, including the option to say, “Actually I don’t want any of the candidates presented”.
“None of the above” could be treated like a third major party – if it won the majority vote for an electorate, all the parties would have to go back and start over: finding new candidates and doing a better job of explaining what they offer.
Yes, it would be organised chaos for a while – but it would be interesting to see what changes the major political parties make as a result. My guess is the rate of informal votes would dramatically drop and we would see some interesting shifts in policy and the choices of candidates.
What do you think – should we have a “(c) None of the above” option in elections?
Ingrid Cliff
We put your business into words
Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer
This entry was posted on Monday, December 26th, 2011 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Leadership article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 26th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
hear hear. Very much a fan of the c – none of the above option. Though I don’t think it would really be the way to run a country. Sometimes it better the devil you know. Perhaps what we need is a ‘brewster millions’ candidate!
December 26th, 2011 at 9:12 pm
LOL Paul – I would still love to see what would happen. My suspicion is that at the moment there is no real impetus for either side to change their approach (even a hung Federal parliament resulted in no change). Wouldn’t it be a cool experiment – at the very least I would like to see pollsters include the option in their questions.