It all started when one of my friends called Right to negative vote, i.e. Vote "None of the above" as a landmark Judgement that would make democracy true, fair and some other things that I can't recall. This allows common man the right to reject, he said. And someone else added that in a multi party democracy, whoever enjoys the confidence of the majority wins. If vote for none is the majority, we should have a re-election. Perhaps they misunderstood the whole election thing but it drives me nuts when people throw around words like confidence of majority. The candidate with the plurality of votes wins the election.
My opinion was that in a country with compulsory voting, it'd be interesting to cast a 'None of the above' vote. It makes absolutely no difference in India. Not even a symbolic one.
In my view it would be worthwhile to have a 2-tier election. First round everybody competes. The top 2 vote-getters go to the second round. Whoever gets 50% + 1 vote wins. This avoids someone with say 30% total vote winning the seat in a crowded electorate. Another promising option is Preferential voting. Where you don't just vote for one person, you list your preferences. So the truly abominable candidates can be filtered out. These are meaningful electoral reforms. And they have been tried in other countries with various levels of success. The right to negative vote is just theatre. Damn good theatre for sure but still theatre.
My opinion was that in a country with compulsory voting, it'd be interesting to cast a 'None of the above' vote. It makes absolutely no difference in India. Not even a symbolic one.
In my view it would be worthwhile to have a 2-tier election. First round everybody competes. The top 2 vote-getters go to the second round. Whoever gets 50% + 1 vote wins. This avoids someone with say 30% total vote winning the seat in a crowded electorate. Another promising option is Preferential voting. Where you don't just vote for one person, you list your preferences. So the truly abominable candidates can be filtered out. These are meaningful electoral reforms. And they have been tried in other countries with various levels of success. The right to negative vote is just theatre. Damn good theatre for sure but still theatre.
