There has been a lot of publicity and some muted cheering
about the introduction of the None of the Above (NOTA) option on Electronic
Voting Machines (EVMs) for the 2014 General Elections. Every voter has always
had the right to go and announce that they DO NOT want to vote for any of the
candidates. NOTA just makes this announcement electronic. The Election Committee has been lauded for
this too.
While the option was always available to voters, there have
been very few people who exercised this right. Many knew it thanks to plenty of
NGOs spreading the word but typically, a person thinks that it is not worth the
effort to go to the voting venue, stand in the queue and then announce this.
NOTA is not likely to change this feeling.
Theoretically one of the goals of the right to refuse to vote by either announcing it or clicking NOTA is supposed to prevent booth capturing. The idea is that if registered voters turn up and large numbers and exercise suffrage by any means, the political parties cannot send fake voters during the event or stuff their votes (in days before EVM) in ballot boxes after the end of the voting day. Even EVMs were introduced in an effort to curb the menace of booth capturing that had risen in the late 1980s (plenty of us remember journalist Nalini Singh’s daring interview of booth capturers taken in the dim lights of jeep headlights around mid-1980s) and peaked in the 1990s. There are still some questions around the effectiveness of EVMs in stopping or curbing booth capturing – but the jury is still out on this one.
The other goal, of course is the clean up the politicians
and political system.
Coming back to NOTA, let us consider two possible scenarios.
Scenario 1:
Consider that there is a 60% voter turnout (an optimistic figure, but this is a hypothetical scenario, so let’s just go with it) in a centre. 20% use NOTA. Of the remaining 40%, 10% vote for Party A; 9% for Party B; 5% for Party C; 5% for Party D and the remaining 11% give their votes to various Independents (a large enough contingent who do not contest to win, but to sell the votes they get).
In this scenario the highest vote gatherer is NOTA. But it
is likely that Party A that gets the highest votes amongst the candidates will
be declared the winner.
Has NOTA then been effective?
Scenario 2
Again, consider a 60% voter turnout. Every single person chooses NOTA. That means 100% of voters reject all candidates contesting. What happens then? Will that particular centre have President’s Rule or will they have to live with the candidate/Party selected by the rest of the constituency?
Nett, nett, though NOTA seems to be an empowering button on
the EVM, the real value of this option is unclear. Toying with possibilities
makes it look like NOTA is a placebo, not a medicine to cure the malaise of
rejectable and regrettable candidates getting tickets from national parties and
finding place in the hallowed political grounds of India.
Sujata Garimella