Tuesday, August 31, 2010

I had forgotten this.

In Nevada, "None of these candidate" is a choice on the ballot. That could help Harry Reid defeat Sharron Angle. I've often thought about I'd like to have that choice on the ballot, but I can see that it can reward mudslinging by making people so disgusted that they reward a candidate who otherwise couldn't win by voting against both him and his opponent, essentially reducing the requirement from a majority to a plurality. My proposal, however, has always been to count the number of registered voters who fail to vote as votes for "None of the above." This is, of course, entirely impractical. Nobody would win most elections. But it might be worth doing for one year, just to make it clear to people how their failure to vote can seize up the workings of our republican form of government. The trick now would be how to assure that those who do vote, are informed on the issues and the candidates and I don't know how to do that.

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